


What Comes After

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Afterlife, Character Death - Sort of, Dead Like Me AU, Discussion of Death, F/M, Grief, Grim Reapers, Mourning, Moving On, Rumbelle - Freeform, TV AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-04-24 15:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 67,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14358609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Dead Like MeAU. After Belle French loses her life in an accident, she finds out that she has been recruited to join the ranks of the Grim Reapers, helping souls pass on. It’s a huge upheaval to deal with, but her fellow reapers are there to help her out, especially head reaper Gold.Who says you can’t find love after life?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: Character death. Sort of. All of the main characters are technically dead. Well, the premise kind of gives that away a bit. The entire fic will contain a lot of discussion of death, grief and mourning, much like _Dead Like Me_ does.
> 
> Also note that the Storybrooke this is set in is a much larger town than in OUAT; it’s modelled after the town where I currently live. There are only so many people you can kill off in a town as small as OUAT Storybrooke…

The sky was purple. Of all the things that happened that day, Belle would always remember the colour of the sky, the heavy dark grey rainclouds and the waning light of a late February evening making the sky purple. It had been pouring down with rain all day, pelting ferociously and never letting up.

Belle had never minded the rain. In fact, sometimes she welcomed it. With so many people looking to get out of the rain in the hope of it easing a little and letting them go on their way, the library saw many more patrons than it normally would on a regular Thursday afternoon. It provided free entertainment for people who didn’t want to be at home and had nowhere else to go in the deluge, and some of the people who only popped in to wait out the storm outside were enticed to stay a little longer and check out books for later.

Technically, the library had closed ten minutes ago, Belle had made all the announcements over the PA system, but she could forgive people not being in any great hurry to leave considering the weather outside. She’d managed to coax most people out, and she was just performing the final sweep of the building to make sure that no-one would be locked in overnight. Her fellow librarians had already left for the day, and Belle was pretty sure that she was alone in the building.

Well, she had been sure until she rounded the corner of the least used part of the building, housing sheet music. It was dry and dusty round here, hardly ever frequented by anyone, but today someone was sitting at the little desk at the end of the aisle, hunched over a book. It was a woman with long, bright red hair, and she looked up as Belle approached.

“Sorry,” she said. “I got carried away.”

Belle looked down at the book that the woman was reading; it was a comprehensive non-fiction volume on the story of the Titanic sinking. She smiled.

“It’s all right. I know how it feels like to get lost in a book.”

“Yes.” The woman looked down at the book. “It’s almost like being back there.”

The turn of phrase was odd; as if the woman had actually been present during the Titanic sinking, but Belle thought nothing of it.

“The library’s closed now, but if you come down to the desk, I’ll check it out for you.”

“No, it’s all right. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

There was a yellow post-it stuck in the book, and Belle could just make out the writing on it.

_Storybrooke Central Library. ETD 5:56 PM_

Belle glanced at her watch; it had just gone quarter to six, and she wondered what the woman’s appointment could be that was timed so precisely. It didn’t fit with any of the bus timetables. She mentally scolded herself for being nosy, and the woman plucked the post-it out of the book, pocketing it quickly.

“Thank you,” the woman said. She took Belle’s hand as if to shake it, holding on a little bit too long to be comfortable, and then she moved away, down towards the end of the stack.

Belle watched her go, perturbed. There was something about the woman that definitely didn’t feel right. She grabbed the book, going to put it back on its regular shelf, but when she reached the end of the aisle, there was no sign of the woman anywhere.  She couldn’t just have vanished, and there hadn’t been enough time for her to have left the building. If it wasn’t for the book in her hands, Belle would have said that she’d imagined the entire interaction.

Still somewhat uneasy, she continued her sweep of the building, locking up as she went and returning the Titanic book. By the time she was setting the alarm and locking up the outer door, she had almost managed to put the strange encounter with the red-headed woman to the back of her mind.

The rain kept pouring from the purple sky. Purple rain. Belle hummed a few bars of the Prince song as she put her umbrella up and headed towards the bus stop just up the road from the library. Ordinarily she would walk the distance to her home, she didn’t mind the rain, but even she had a limit for the amount of water she could take coming down on her from above. There were only a few other people at the stop, she’d just missed the previous bus whilst she’d been locking up the library.

She looked down at her shoes, once burgundy, the toes now stained black from the rain. They should dry out well enough once she got home and stuffed some kitchen paper in them, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about the rain until the next morning. The sulphur orange of the streetlights was reflecting in the slick road, splintering into shards as the rain kept pounding down.

Belle heard the screech of tires as a car came around the corner and aquaplaned on the road, out of control, and she heard the other people at the bus stop yelling. She only just had enough time to leap out of the way as it mounted the pavement just an inch from where she’d been standing.

Belle’s heart was pounding as the other people rushed past her towards the car; they were shouting that someone had been hit. She’d had a lucky escape then, and as shaken as she was, she knew that she had to go over and help.

She went to fold up her umbrella only to find that it wasn’t there anymore; she must have dropped it when she’d got out of the way of the car and not realised.

“Madam? Madam, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, not looking over at the person who was hailing her. “Yes, I got out of the way, I’m ok.”

“Madam, I really don’t think…”

Belle didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. She’d reached the car, where everyone was crowding around the person who’d been hit.

The person was wearing burgundy shoes, the toes stained black from the rain.

Belle looked down at her own feet, at those exact same shoes, and she gasped, her knees buckling.

“Hey, it’s all right. It’s a bit of a shock to the system at first, but you’re going to be all right.”

It was a different voice, a woman this time, and Belle felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to the person who was trying to reassure her, shaking off the lady’s hand and taking a step back, pointing towards the car and her legs underneath it.

“How is this possible?” she asked. “How I am there and here? Am I..?”

The woman nodded.

“You’re dead,” she said apologetically. “There’s really no way to sugar coat that news, I’m sorry.”

“If I’m dead, why am I still here? And…” She looked back over at the car. She’d sworn that she’d jumped out of the way. She hadn’t felt a thing. She patted herself down for injuries, but found nothing.

“We took your soul out before you died,” the woman explained. “That’s why you didn’t feel anything. Come on, let’s get somewhere dryer and we’ll explain everything.”

A well-dressed man came towards them with a large golfing umbrella that he put over them both, and the other woman steered Belle away from the scene of her death. She couldn’t help but look over her shoulder, at the body that would never breathe again. An ambulance was pulling up, and Belle wanted to tell them not to bother, it was too late.

“They can’t see you,” the man said. Belle recognised the voice; he was the one who had first asked her if she was all right and had warned her against going to investigate the accident.

“Who are you people?” she asked, trying to pull away from the woman’s gentle touch on her back guiding her further and further away from her life.

“Grim reapers,” the woman said. “Although you can call me Mulan, and this is Gold.”

“Grim reapers!” Belle exclaimed. She looked back over her shoulder but none of the gathered crowd at the bus stop took any notice of her.

“They can’t hear you, either,” Gold said.

“So I’m a ghost?”

“Meh.” Gold held out the hand not holding the umbrella and wiggled it, the movement made somewhat more alarming by the fact he was holding a walking cane in it. Mulan had to side-step out of the arc of motion. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Belle was horribly aware of just how shrill she sounded, but she thought she could be forgiven considering that she had just undergone the most traumatic experience of her life, namely, the end of it. She shook her head. “Shouldn’t I be moving on to whatever comes next?” she asked. “Pearly gates and fluffy clouds or whatever’s in store for me? I’m not great but I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve hell.”

“Now, this is where the sort-of ghost thing comes in,” Gold said. “Come on, in here.”

They had walked a fair distance down the street to a pub, not too busy this early in the evening. Mulan led Belle over to a table in the corner at the back, unnoticed by the other patrons. Gold went to get drinks, and Belle noticed that he only brought two over.

“I’d offer to get you one too,” he said as he settled on the chair opposite her. “But you’re not entirely corporeal yet. Not whilst your actual body’s still out there.”

“What are you talking about!” Belle exclaimed. “Am I dead or not? Am I a ghost or not? How come you can drink whisky and I can’t, because I could really use one right now!”

Gold took a sip of his whisky, and then a deep breath.

“You can see why I wanted you to come along to this one, can’t you?” he asked Mulan. The other woman rolled her eyes and turned to Belle.

“I’m sorry, I know that this is very hard for you and it’s a lot to take in, and he’s not helping.” She jerked her thumb at Gold. “He’s been dead so long he can’t remember what it was like for him when it first happened.”

Gold didn’t say anything, and Mulan continued.

“Yes, you are dead. You just died in that car accident. Your body’s dead, but just before someone dies, we, that is grim reapers, take their soul out of the body so that the soul is free to move on to wherever it needs to move onto. We help people cross over.”

“Right.” Belle was no nearer to understanding what was going on, but sitting down out of the rain without her dead body just a few feet away from her, she was less inclined to panic. “Why haven’t I moved on, then? Unless this is you helping me move on, in which case, no offence, but you’re really not doing a very good job of it.”

Mulan shook her head. “No. You haven’t moved on because you were your reaper’s last reap, which means that the job automatically passes to you.”

“What?”

“Every reaper has a quota of souls,” Gold said. “When they reach that quota, they move on, like all the other souls.”

“So, this is some kind of punishment? Like purgatory?”

Mulan shook her head. “No, just the luck of the draw. Whether you become a reaper or whether you move on straight away has nothing to do with what happened during your life.”

“Oh.” Belle really wanted to say something along the lines of ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ but she knew that it would be pointless. She hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That was the whole idea.

“Just before you came out of the library, did you meet a young woman?” Mulan asked. “Red hair, pretty smile, probably made a strange remark about the weather or water or boating accidents or the Titanic or something? Vanished into thin air as soon as you turned your back?”

Belle nodded slowly.

“Her name was Ariel. She was your reaper, and you were her last reap. She’s moved on now, and it’s up to you to take her place.”

Belle took a moment to let this information sink in. She was dead, except that she wasn’t really. Was she undead?

“Wait, you guys don’t eat brains, do you?” she asked warily. She knew how stupid it sounded, but it was a legitimate concern, all things considered. Mulan and Gold just looked at her, then at each other, then back at her.

“No,” Gold assured her. “No, normal food is perfectly good sustenance for us, as it will be for you when you become corporeal again. We’re reapers, not zombies. Or vampires.”

“They don’t exist,” Mulan pointed out.

“In my defence, I didn’t think that the grim reaper existed until I became one,” Belle said. “Now you’ve got me wondering what else out there might be true.”

That was a point, actually. She had always thought that there was just the one grim reaper collecting all the souls, dressed in a long black robe and hood with skeletal hands, holding a scythe. Now she knew that there were at least three of them, and there were no cowls or scythes in sight.

“How many others are there?” Belle asked Mulan. “The grim reaper is something of a singular concept. Most people think that there’s only one.”

“Lord no,” Gold said. He downed the last of his whisky. “Have you any idea how many people die every day in Storybrooke alone, and from how many different causes? One person would never be able to get everyone’s souls in time.”

Belle thought about it, and that brought her full circle to her own death, remembering that it had occurred just an hour or so before.

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“Now, you make peace with your old life and begin your new one,” Mulan said. It was simple and eloquently put, but Belle was still having trouble reconciling it with what was going on around her.

“What about my friends? My family?” she asked. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’ll grieve for you, and they’ll continue living,” Gold said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them.”

“Can’t I let them know that I’m ok?” Belle asked. “That I’m still here?”

Mulan shook her head. “You’re not still here, though, Belle,” she said gently.

That was what really hammered it home, the final realisation that she really had parted company with her life. She would never see her friends and family again. This thing she was now was a ghost, and the thing she would become soon enough wasn’t going to be the Belle she had been before. Her body was probably still lying out there on the pavement by the bus stop, under a car in the pouring rain.

Belle broke down into tears, loud, wailing sobs that would have attracted the attention of everyone in the pub if they’d been able to hear her. Her life as she knew it was over in the most brutal and literal sense of the words. She felt Mulan rubbing her back, doing her best to comfort her, and she wondered how many other new reapers she and Gold had initiated during their time, and whether a reaction like this was par for the course for them.

They waited patiently until she had cried herself out, neither of them telling her to pull herself together.

“No matter what they say, the one death that you can never truly get over and move on from is your own,” Gold said. He handed her the deep indigo pocket square from his jacket to wipe her face with. “It will get easier with time, I promise.”

There was an earnestness in his face that Belle appreciated. Both he and Mulan obviously knew how difficult adjusting to her new life, or lack of, was going to be, and neither of them chastised her for her reaction.

“Now what?” Belle snuffled into the handkerchief. She wondered how come it didn’t go through her in her ghostly state, but she figured that since Mulan and Gold could see and hear and touch her when nobody else could and could also interact with the living, they probably existed on both planes at once and their influence extended to handkerchiefs.

“Now, we wait for you to become corporeal again,” Gold said. “Then everything can start over.”

X

Belle declined the offer to view her own autopsy. Apparently some people found it useful in helping them to let go of their former bodies, as seeing yourself clinically cut up by a coroner was usually enough to break even the strongest of attachments. Nevertheless, Belle really didn’t want to see what injuries she might have sustained in the crash. For now, she was just extremely grateful that it had not hurt, and she wanted to keep the memory of a quick, clean death for as long as possible, and not have it shattered by seeing what had actually happened.

She did, however, go to her funeral. Attending one’s own funeral was a privilege, Gold explained as the three of them walked up the path towards her father’s house where the wake was taking place. Only reapers were allowed to attend their own funerals. It was part of the process of becoming corporeal and being able to interact with the world again, that ultimate and final goodbye to life.

The wake was awkward at best, although not because of all the grieving friends and relatives. Belle could handle those, even if she did want to go around and hug all of them, telling them that she was all right and she was going to stick around for a while helping other souls. It was more the fact that people kept walking through her, and she kept walking through things. It was a horrible sensation, and it made Belle feel like even though they were at her wake and were celebrating her life, she was being forgotten already, people seeing straight through her.

She found Mulan in the kitchen.

“I don’t like funerals,” the reaper confessed. “I know that’s terrible to admit considering my current vocation.”

“They’ve never been my favourite pastime either,” Belle said. She sat down at the table, looking at the spread that her father and one of the flower shop assistants, Brenda, had laid out there, ready to top up the food in the dining room where everyone else was gathered. It was making her mouth water, so many of her favourite foods were there, but she knew that she couldn’t have any of it.

The kitchen door opened again and Belle looked over her shoulder to find that her friend Ruby had come in and was crouched in the corner by the fridge, crying her eyes out. She looked up and saw Mulan sitting at the table watching her.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realise anyone else was in here.”

“It’s all right,” Mulan said. “Let it all out. It’s a miserable occasion, after all.”

Ruby nodded, burying her face in her knees again.

“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” she murmured. “We were going on a girls’ trip to Dublin this summer. I kept teasing her about getting lost in Trinity College library there.”

“You know, I’m sure she’s a lot closer than you think,” Mulan said. Oh, the irony. Belle desperately wanted to go over and comfort her friend, but all she could do was sit here in silence, knowing that there was nothing she could do to alleviate this pain.

There was a certain sense of catharsis there though. Although everyone kept walking through her and no-one could see her, Belle knew that they were definitely remembering her and were missing her, and that they would continue to do so. Despite the bleakness of what was going on around her, Belle felt loved. Everyone was unhappy, but even though she was gone in their eyes, they did still love her.

She got up from the table, taking a deep breath before passing through the kitchen door and moving through the rest of the house to find her father. He was talking to one of his friends from the plant nursery where he received all the stock for _Game of Thorns_ , and it was clear that he was only just keeping it together for the sake of appearances since he was the host of the whole event.

Belle wanted to leave. The mourners’ grief was weighing heavy on her now, and although she wanted to stay and spend time with her friends and family, she needed to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of sadness.

“I think it’s time to go,” Gold said quietly in her ear. “Have you seen what you needed to see?”

Belle nodded. “Yes. Let’s go.”

Gold and Mulan said their goodbyes to Moe; no-one asked them how they had known Belle or whether they had just come to the wake for the free food, and then they were outside in the cold air once more. Belle shivered; she was still wearing the same clothes that her body had died in, and despite her coat and scarf she felt cold. It was the first time that she’d really felt the influence of her surroundings since she’d died, and she was so busy pondering it that she didn’t notice when she opened the garden gate to let them out instead of passing straight through it.

“Welcome back,” Gold said.

“Sorry?”

He nodded down towards her hand, resting on the gatepost, and Belle blinked. She was solid again, her ghost form having become a new corporeal body.

“So, I’ve moved on, then?” she asked tentatively. Gold nodded.

“Yes, you’re officially one of us now.”

Belle looked back up at the house, the realisation sinking in that now she could truly never go back there.

“What happens now?” she mumbled.

Gold smiled, his touch on her shoulder light and guiding her away from the house.

“Now, you become a reaper. Come on. Let’s go and meet the rest of the team.”


	2. Chapter 2

Now that she was fully corporeal again, Belle could finally change out of the clothes that she’d died in. In the time between her death and the funeral, things had been slightly hazy; there were periods that she couldn’t quite remember. Gold had assured her that it was normal - with nothing to do and no way to interact with the world around her, she’d ‘switched off’ for long stretches of time whilst the other reapers went about their daily lives doing things that did involve interacting with the world.

“Think of it as going into hibernation mode,” Mulan said as she let Belle into her apartment so that she could borrow some clothes. “You just faded out for a while. As you were a ghost, you couldn’t sleep or anything like that, so you just faded out, and came back when you needed to.”

“How long has it actually been?” Belle asked.

“Two and a half weeks.”

“What? It only feels like a couple of days!”

It came as quite a shock to realise that so much time had passed since her accident. At the same time, though, the memory of the actual moment of her death felt far more distant, much further back in the past than only two and a half weeks. Perhaps that was the point. It was a memory of her old life, and not a particularly pleasant one at that, and now she was beginning her new one. Maybe the lapse in memory was intentional to help reapers move on and reintegrate quicker.

Mulan was a good couple of inches taller than Belle so her clothes didn’t quite fit, but Belle was simply glad to be out of the ones that she’d been wearing for over a fortnight - even if she had been incorporeal for most of that time. After all, she had died in them, she thought she could be forgiven for wanting to change as soon as possible.

“Are you ladies ready?” Gold asked. “The others are meeting us at the usual place.”

“What others?” Belle asked, hurrying out of the apartment after Mulan and Gold. “And what’s the usual place?”

“You’ll see,” Gold said enigmatically. “It wouldn’t do for you to be getting all the secrets about the afterlife in the first day now, would it? Where’s the fun in that?”

“You know, Gold, I don’t think that your idea of fun and mine stack up,” Belle muttered.

“Afraid of the unknown?” Gold asked.

“A little.”

“You’ll soon get over that. This job’s all about the unknown.”

There was a little smile on his face as he spoke, quirking up the corner of his mouth, and Belle found herself noticing for the first time that he was actually rather attractive. She turned away quickly, trying to chase the thought out of her head. She was dead for heaven’s sake, she shouldn’t be thinking about things like this. It was…

Well, Gold was dead too, something in the back of her mind reasoned.

She shook her head, pulling her thoughts back to the task at hand and the great unknown that she was about to step into.

That great unknown turned out to be Granny’s diner, and for a moment, Belle was disappointed. She had been expecting something not entirely of this earth, and it must have shown in her face, as Mulan tried and failed to stifle a laugh behind her hand.

“Sorry, your expression’s priceless,” she said. “We don’t have some kind of supernatural conference room, if that was what you were thinking of.”

“Not exactly,” Belle protested, although that was exactly what she’d had in mind.

“We operate firmly on this plane,” Gold said.

Belle looked around the diner. It was a typical place, not too busy, where you could be sure of being left alone to conduct whatever business you had to conduct. She’d been in here before, back when Ruby had been working as a waitress here. Her grandmother owned the place, hence the name, but she didn’t tend to come in much anymore, preferring to stay in the office and oversee things from there.

All the same, Belle shrank back a bit as they entered.

“What’s up?” Mulan asked.

“I know Granny. What if she sees me here when two hours ago, Ruby was at my funeral?”

Mulan shook her head. “It won’t be a problem. Only reapers see each other’s true faces.”

“So I’ll be a stranger to her?”

“Yes.”

Belle wasn’t sure quite how she felt about that. On the one hand, it made a lot of sense as she couldn’t exactly walk around a place where she’d just died whilst wearing her own face. It would probably cause more trouble than it was worth to invent a long-lost identical twin. On the other hand, it did nothing to help with the sense of isolation from her old life. This was a fresh start in the most brutal way; all contact with everyone had been unceremoniously cut off and she was on her own, with the two reapers her only friends and guides.

Gold led them over to a corner booth and indicated for Mulan and Belle to sit; he took the end seat so that he could stretch out his leg and cane. The injury made Belle wonder; if people’s souls were pulled from their bodies before they died so that they didn’t carry the injuries of their death through to the afterlife, that must mean that whatever had happened to Gold’s leg had happened long before he’d died.

She didn’t ask what had happened; she’d only known him for two and a half weeks and she’d been drifting in a state of not quite consciousness for most of that. Instead, she just watched him as he took a slim leather-bound diary out of his pocket and started flicking through.

The pages were covered in yellow post-its, and Belle’s stomach churned as she recognised the spidery handwriting and style from the post-it Ariel had had, just before she’d taken her soul.

“All right folks, what can I get you?”

Belle looked up in alarm on hearing Granny’s voice. Even though she knew that Granny couldn’t see her, at least for who she was, it was still disconcerting.

“Just iced tea, please, Mrs Lucas,” Gold said. “Short-staffed today? We don’t see you in here very often these days.”

Granny nodded. “Ruby would have covered, but…”

Belle could fill in the gaps. No-one needed to say anything, even though for all Granny knew, none of them knew who Belle was or that she had just died.

Mulan was in the middle of ordering coffee and inquiring about the day’s pie when the diner door swung open again and nothing short of a vision walked in.

“Sorry we’re late, darling! That one down at the old biscuit factory simply wouldn’t move on and I had to enlist David’s help to get him to budge so that we could come here.”

The woman, unforgettable in black fur that was probably real, and monochrome hair, came over to Gold and kissed him loudly on both cheeks without making contact, and Mulan scooched up to make room for her. It was only then that Belle noticed that she hadn’t come in alone and another man was watching the table with amusement.

“You must be the newbie,” he said, sliding in beside the fur coat and holding out a hand to her over the table. “I’m David, and once she stops talking and introduces herself, this is Ella.”

Granny was still waiting off to one side with her order pad, and David took pity on her, ignoring Ella and ordering pancakes. Belle’s stomach growled; it was only now she realised that she hadn’t eaten for two and a half weeks, and even though she’d only really had a stomach for the last couple of hours, she could really feel it complaining now.

“I’ll have the same,” she said.

Granny smiled. “Coming right up.”

It was so strange to talk to Granny with no recognition there, and not for the first time that day, Belle really wanted to reveal her identity.

“Ella, if you care to stop expounding about the chap at the biscuit factory, there’s something very important about our usual table that you have as yet failed to comment on,” Gold said.

Ella looked over at Belle and broke into a grin.

“New talent!” she said. “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, you know. It’s been so boring without Ariel, no-one else appreciates my sense of humour.”

Belle wasn’t quite sure that the same could be said for Ella. She was certainly a larger than life character, but perhaps that had something to do with the fact that she was indeed beyond life at that point.

“What on earth makes you think Belle will appreciate your sense of humour?” Mulan asked.

“She hasn’t known me as long as all the rest of you. You’ve got to get them whilst they’re fresh.”

“Ella.” Gold’s tone was firm, and the conversation broke off as their food and drinks arrived.

“All right, all right, I’ll behave myself,” Ella said with a sigh. “It’s very nice to meet you, Belle. My name is Ella and I will be one of your four motley guides to this new life that you’ve found yourself unceremoniously thrust into without warning. I am available for all queries, especially on where to find the best gin in any given town.”

“She’s always like this,” Mulan added helpfully. “Never let it be said that Ella doesn’t have a flare for the dramatic.”

“All right, I think that everyone’s been introduced but in case anything was missed: this is Belle, she’s taking over from Ariel, she only became corporeal again earlier today so please help her out and show her the ropes, and try not to overwhelm her with tales of reaps gone awry too early on.”

This remark was directed pointedly at Ella, who placed a hand on her heart with contrition.

“I swear that I will be the paragon of perfection,” she said. “The best role model any new reaper could hope for.”

Gold just raised an eyebrow and turned back to the others. “David, Belle’s with you this afternoon.”

“Oh come on!” Ella protested. “I just swore to be good!”

Belle could only laugh at Ella’s indignation.

Gold began handing out post-its to each of the other reapers. “Belle, if you go with David he’ll show you how it’s done. David, if you bring her by the shop afterwards, we’ll get you set up with new ID.”

Belle was about to point out the paradox of a dead person needing ID before she realised that despite being dead, she did indeed exist in this world and therefore needed something to allow her to do so.

The diner door opened again and another young man came in and rushed over to their table just as they were all getting up to leave.

“Sorry I’m late, I just wanted to say hello to the new recruit,” he said, panting, and he held out a hand to Belle. “Graham, myocardial infarctions division. Welcome!”

“Erm, thanks.” Belle shook his hand. “I suppose I’ll see you around.”

Mulan stayed in the diner with Graham whilst he got his breath back, and Belle followed David outside.

“Myocardial infarctions division?” she asked.

“Heart attacks,” David said.

“I know what a myocardial infarction is, I just don’t see how it’s a division.”

“All reapers are assigned to a division based on how they died,” David explained. “We’re going in this direction, by the way.”

He steered her off down a side street that led towards the docks.

“So Graham died of a heart attack?”

“Exactly.”

“I guess that I’m in the car accident division.”

“No, it’s not as specific as that,” David said. “Myocardial infarctions and malignant neoplasms get their own divisions because there are so many deaths from those things, they need more reapers. You, me, Gold, Mulan and Ella, we’re all assigned to external influences.”

“So, accidents, basically.”

“Precisely, but it does also include homicide and suicide.”

“Right.” Belle couldn’t say that she was particularly looking forward to that. “I’ll bear that in mind. What’s with the post-its?”

“It’s the information about the person who’s going to die.” David showed her the note.

_L. Tubbs. Pier 3. ETD: 4:09 PM_

“That’s not really a lot to go on,” Belle observed. “I’m guessing ETD is estimated time of death.”

“You guess correctly. It’s true, there’s not much information, but you don’t want to be getting too attached to someone you’re about to reap. It’s best to maintain a level of professional distance.”

Belle nodded, and she continued to follow David down towards the pier. The idea of professional distance made her wonder.

“David… Have you ever had to reap someone you know?”

David shook his head. “Gold knows the full details of all the reaps and assigns them out; he’d never assign a friend or family member to a reaper. Once he assigns them, they’re final and no-one else can take on that reap for you.”

“Ok.” That was a comforting thought. At least she wouldn’t have to fear the prospect of having to watch one of her friends die. “So, Gold’s the boss?”

David chuckled. “He prefers the technical term ‘head reaper’, but yeah, he’s the boss.”

They had reached the pier by this point, with just under ten minutes to go before the ETD. There weren’t all that many people hanging around, but Belle didn’t know how they were going to identify the person they needed to reap in time.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Well, some reaps are easy,” David said. “You, for example, were wearing a badge with your full name on at the time, all Ariel had to do was hang around until the time was right. You don’t want to reap someone too early or they’re walking around with their soul detached all day and that’s not healthy. All sorts of unexpected accidents can happen when you do that. Today though, we’re going to have to do a little bit of detective work. Think of it a bit like Cluedo.”

“Final destination did it with the lead piping by the docks, that kind of thing.”

“Pretty much, except the methods are always a lot more interesting than just simple lead piping. Sometimes it’s the smallest thing being overlooked that can have rather profound and sometimes hilarious consequences.” David leaned back against the warehouse that they had come out beside, and surveyed the situation. “I know that might sound insensitive, but when you do this every day, you have to do what you can to lighten the mood. Jefferson used to take bets on how people would die.”

“That’s morbid.”

“Well, he was always a strange one. Lovely guy, though, and like I said, you do what you can. Still, we’ve got business to attend to. The piers are full of things that could cause accidents, a veritable playground for fate. Now, we need to find the unfortunate person whom she’s decided to screw over today.”

Belle looked around. None of the people on the pier were wearing name tags, and time was ticking on. A couple of men were working on a sailing boat nearby.

“Hey, Leroy!” one of them called. “Can I get a wrench over here?”

“Get your own wrench!”

Belle and David looked at each other. Could Leroy be the L. Tubbs of the post-it? The two men continued to argue back and forth for a little while, and David inched a little closer whilst Belle watched from the warehouse.

“There’s a wrench right next to you!” Leroy exclaimed. “Are you blind, Leonard?”

Belle saw David’s shoulders sag, and then he heaved a huge sigh before straightening up and walking towards the boat with an air of confidence and bravado, as if he had every right to be there and as if he had no intention of bringing bad fortune with him.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a Mr Tubbs?”

Leonard raised his head, in doing so knocking the wrench beside him onto the boat deck. He grimaced and rubbed his head.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m from the Cormorant insurance company, it’s about your boat.”

Leonard shook his head.

“Must be a different Tubbs,” he said. “The _Delilah_ ’s insured with Admiralty.”

“Must have been a mix-up at the office then. Sorry to disturb you.”

He held out his hand and Leonard shook it, and it was then that Belle saw it, a little shimmering wisp of smoke dissipating from the man’s skin.

David came back over to Belle, and Leonard and Leroy launched into an argument over just whose boat the _Delilah_ actually was.

“And now we wait,” he said. “Sometimes it’s easy just to lie your way into these things and lie your way out. Cormorant Insurance is an excellent cover but I think we’re going to have to stop using it soon. People are going to be suspicious about insurance agents turning up and then two minutes later people dying in freak accidents.”

“Yes, I can see how that would look suspicious,” Belle agreed. “So, what happens now? Where’s his soul?”

“It’s about somewhere. It’ll only materialise once he’s actually dead, we don’t pull them out fully. That would leave them in a zombie state. It has been done before though by a couple of overenthusiastic reapers.”

Belle shuddered. “Please don’t tell me things like that,” she muttered, before turning her attention back to the boat, and to Leonard who only had less than a minute left on this earthly plane.

It all happened very quickly, and it was the wrench’s fault. Leonard turned to go back to whatever it was had he had been tinkering with before David had interrupted, and promptly tripped over the wrench that he’d previously knocked onto the deck. He fell against the cabin, which in turn knocked over the toolbox that was balanced precariously on top of it.

Belle had to cover her eyes, only peeping through them when she heard Leonard swearing profusely. The many sharp tools falling out of the box had all managed to miss him, and she furrowed her brow.

“What’s going on?”

“Fate’s still working her magic,” David said calmly. “She’s still got twenty seconds, and it’s only an estimated time of death, after all.”

Belle continued to watch through her fingers as Leonard got to his feet again, brushing himself down.

Only for him to slip in a puddle of oil from a can in the spilled contents of the toolbox and crash down, hitting his head against the deck with a very loud crack of finality.

It was exactly nine minutes past four.

“What happened?”

Belle looked up on hearing Leonard’s voice again. He was now standing beside them, looking down at his hands and feet, and then over at the boat where the incident had taken place and where Leroy was desperately trying to revive his friend. David put an arm around his shoulders.

“It was just one of those accidents, Leonard,” he said. “Come on. There’s something waiting for you.”

Belle’s eyes widened as a bright light dropped out of the sky, materialising into the hazy vision of a sailing boat very much like the _Delilah_. Leoanrd was instantly drawn to it, and David held out a hand to stop Belle from following him.

“We can’t follow,” he said. “Everyone’s lights are individual.”

As soon as Leonard stepped onto the boat, the lights faded out, back from whence they came, and Belle was left staring at the space where he had been for a long time. Considering how quickly the accident had happened, there was a definite sense of peace in the air.

“He’s moved on,” David said. “We helped with that. You’re going to see a lot of things as a reaper, and not many of them are going to be pleasant, but you always have the comfort of knowing that you’ve helped someone move on, and that whatever comes next for them, they’re at peace.”

Belle nodded, it was a nice thought.

“We’d probably better get out of here before people start asking questions,” David said. “One of the secrets of being a good reaper is knowing when to make a discreet exit.”

They left the docks by the way they had come. Neither of them really spoke; Belle was still digesting what she had just witnessed.

“I’ll drop you off with Gold at the shop now,” David said presently. “He’ll take care of the logistics for you.”

They were in the old part of the town, full of all the small independent shops that had been there for years and would remain there for years to come; Belle didn’t know how they managed to make enough to stay in business, hardly anyone seemed to come to them anymore, but still they remained.

David stopped outside a shop on the corner, and Belle took a step back, looking at the sign in the window.

 _Mr Gold, Pawnbroker and Antiquities Dealer_.

“Go on in,” David said. “I’ve got to get going, I need to get to work.”

Belle just nodded dumbly, and entered the shop, the bell above the door jangling as she went through it, and she looked around at her surroundings. It hadn’t changed much from the last time she’d been in here, and that must have been a couple of years ago now.

“Gold?” she called. “Are you here?”

She heard his uneven step and then he came out from behind the curtain that partitioned off the back room.

“Hello Belle. How did the reap go?”

“It was fine…” Belle broke off, too distracted by the shop to pay much attention to what Gold was actually asking her. “Gold, is this really your shop?”

“It is indeed. Unfortunately being a reaper isn’t salaried so we need to find some other source of income if we’re going to get along in the world.”

“I’ve been here before,” Belle said. “I bought a vintage necklace for Ruby.”

Gold nodded. “I know. I remember. I served you.”

“It wasn’t you.” Belle shook her head. “It was a different guy.”

Gold just smiled. “Only reapers see each other’s true faces,” he reminded her.

It was a revelation, and it was possibly the thing that had floored her the most out of all the things that she had seen today - even whilst she had been alive, she had already been in contact with a grim reaper.

“I can appreciate it’s a bit of a shock,” Gold said. “There’s a lot to take in about the world we inhabit. But this is only the beginning. Shall we get started?”

He held back the curtain to the back room. Still somewhat dumbstruck, Belle went through.


	3. Chapter 3

The back room of the antique shop was just as mesmerising as the front had been, perhaps even more so since all the things back here were in various states of disrepair and restoration, and Belle could see the magic and beauty in these unfinished things, revealing their secrets more than the perfect and complete pieces out in the front of the shop did.

The workbench in the centre of the room was spread out with several documents and various pieces of high tech equipment for forging identification methods. Whatever new identity she was going to get, it was going to be a comprehensive one. Gold followed her through into the room and indicated for her to take a seat.

“We might be here a while,” he said. “It’s always best to make sure that everything is ironclad and there are no gaps. Doing what we do, it helps to stay under the radar as much as possible. If people start getting suspicious about us, then the last thing we need is documents that don’t check out.”

He pushed a few papers towards Belle for her to sign, and she scanned through them.

“Lacey Chevalier?” she said, looking at the name on all the documents. “Don’t I get to pick my own fake name?”

Gold shook his head with a smile. “Nope. None of us do. Your name is picked for you by the person making your documents.”

“Why on earth did you pick _Lacey_?” Belle asked. “Do I look like a Lacey?”

Gold turned his head on one side, looking at her critically. “I think you could certainly pass for a Lacey,” he said.

Belle just shook her head and continued to work through all the paperwork. Finally, curiosity got the better of her.

“What’s your fake name then?” she asked. Gold just laughed.

“I don’t have one. I’m not working in the same country I died in and I’ve been dead for over fifty years, so I can use my real name. Same goes for Ella.”

“Right. I see.”

She didn’t see at all, but since she had only been a fully-fledged grim reaper for less than a day, Belle decided that it wasn’t going to be fruitful to argue with the rules of the afterlife, especially with someone who knew them a lot better than she did.

There seemed to be quite a lot of rules for the afterlife considering that they weren’t bound to the rules of the earthly plane anymore, and Belle had to wonder what the consequences for breaking those rules were. She really didn’t want to do anything wrong by accident, because it was clear that she had so much more to learn.

“You’re not going to get smote from above, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gold said when she tentatively asked him about it. “It’s more just that fate will always find a way, and tends to take her revenge in a rather creative fashion, usually creating a lot of hassle for you and your fellow reapers. Don’t worry, we all make mistakes, and the rest of us are here to help you out.”

“You’re not filling me with a great deal of confidence here,” Belle muttered. “Considering I don’t have any choice in whether or not I do this job in the first place.”

“Hmm.” Gold put down his meticulously crafted, but still fake, official stamp, and pondered for a while. “There have been reapers who’ve got into trouble for trying to test the system and push back against it before now,” he said. “There was one up in Seattle who didn’t go to a reap and the poor bloke had his soul stuck inside and conscious throughout his autopsy.”

Belle made a face, that sounded absolutely awful.

“I’ll make sure I go to all my reaps,” she promised.

“It’s not a great job,” Gold conceded. “It’s probably the most morbid one there is. And we don’t get paid for it and we don’t get any choice in the matter. But it’s a job that’s got to be done. There’s no getting around it. There can’t ever be a time when there are no grim reapers because death is the only certainly in life.”

“And taxes,” Belle added. Gold chuckled.

“Well, taxes too.”

They fell into silence for a while as Gold needed to take Belle’s picture for some of her documentation. Belle took to looking around the place again, and she went over to a tray of old jewellery that Gold had evidently been in the middle of cleaning up ready to put on display. She selected a gothic cross in tarnished silver and held it up to the light.

“So, you knew me before I died,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say that I knew you, per se,” Gold said. “We met once.”

“I know, but still… It’s strange to think that when we met, you were, you know, dead.”

Gold shrugged. “We’ve all got to make a living somehow. Even us dead folks.”

Belle sat back down at the workbench. “That’s a point,” she muttered to herself. “How am I supposed to get a job now?”

Gold indicated the paperwork spread out on the desk and the photographs that he was seamlessly inserting into identification documents. “You’ll be a person soon enough.”

It felt so surreal, thinking about the logistics of setting up a new life from scratch after everything that had just happened.

“That reminds me, though,” Gold said, and he got up from the workbench, going over to the corner of the room and wheeling out a sleek black suitcase. “I thought that these might be useful to get you back on your feet.”

Belle took the suitcase and set it on her chair to open it, finding it half full of her own clothes. She looked up at him incredulously.

“Did you break into my apartment?”

Gold nodded. “Yes.”

“When?”

“Just after your death. It’s always easier to do these things sooner rather than later. We don’t usually encourage people to keep things from their previous life, but at least this way you won’t have to be borrowing from Mulan until you get back on your feet.” He paused. “I’m sorry for going through your stuff.”

Belle just continued to stare mutely at the suitcase containing her clothes, before she finally gave a curt little nod.

“It’s ok,” she said. “Thanks for bringing me these.”

It was a comparatively small thing, just a week’s worth of clothing, but in Belle’s mind it meant something that Gold had known she’d need it, and hadn’t just decided to make her fend for herself in her first few days as a new reaper. He was taking care of her, in a slightly strange way, but the only way open to him.

“You’re welcome.” He returned to the workbench and gathered up all the papers, flicking through them to make sure everything was there and then handing them over. “That should be everything. Welcome to your new life, Lacey Chevalier.”

Belle took the documents, turning over each page in turn and looking at the new identity that had suddenly been thrust upon her.

“You’ll need to find somewhere to live as well,” Gold said. “The quickest way for a reaper to find a home is to check out the place of residence of one of their reaps. You can usually strike lucky very quickly, and housing agencies are always in a muddle when one of their tenants dies.”

Belle wrinkled her nose. “That’s horrible.”

Gold shrugged. “Well, they aren’t going to be needing the space anymore,” he said, completely matter of fact, and as callous as it sounded, he did have a point. “It’s usually easy enough to pretend to be a roommate or significant other, and then you can stake a claim.”

“Do I have to do it like that?” Belle asked. “I mean, I’ve got proper documents now.”

“Yes, but you still don’t really exist,” Gold pointed out. “Also, you’re technically unemployed, and since a job might take you a while to find but you need a roof over your head straight away, it’s best not to be too picky about where you hang your coat for the first month or so.”

“It’s all right for you to say that,” Belle said sourly. “You’re doing very well for yourself considering that you don’t really exist either. You’ve got your shop, and you no doubt have a nice home as well.”

“Yes, well, I’ve had a lot of time to get back on my feet,” Gold said. Belle wondered if she was being difficult, but she thought that she could be forgiven a little petulance considering what she had been thrust into without her say-so. These arrangements and rules were nothing to do with her and yet she still had to abide by them without having chosen to do so.

“We’ll all help you,” he continued, “but everyone else’s advice is probably going to be the same as mine.”

Belle gave a long sigh, and she looked again at her new driving license, at the photo that was undeniably her and the information that undeniably wasn’t. She didn’t feel like she was anyone anymore; it was as if everything that had made her Belle was slipping away, and she couldn’t keep a grasp on her old life anymore. She knew that she wasn’t meant to and it wasn’t encouraged, but she couldn’t go into her new life with no sense of self. Lacey Chevalier was just the face that she wore for the world outside; amongst the dead she was still Belle, but how could she remain so when there was so little of Belle left in the world of the living?

She rummaged through the suitcase that contained what was left of her life. Considering he didn’t really know her all that well yet, and certainly hadn’t known her well at the time that he had broken into her apartment to steal the clothes for her, he’d managed to choose quite well. She picked up a soft white jumper in chunky cable knit, one of her very favourite pieces, and she breathed in the lavender scent of the detergent. This was home. This was her, Belle.

“Do you have a bathroom here?” she asked Gold. “Mulan’s clothes really don’t fit and now that I’ve got my own back, I want to get into them as soon as possible.”

Gold nodded towards a door in the corner of the workroom and Belle wheeled her suitcase in there. It was a tiny WC, barely large enough for the toilet and half-sink, but she didn’t care how awkward it was to change in there. As soon as she was back in her old clothes, she began to feel more like herself again, like a bit of her identity had been restored and she could go about her new life again. Gold gave her an appreciative glance as she came out.

“That certainly does look better than your twice-turned up jeans, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Feeling better?”

Belle nodded. Now all she had to do was work out how to stay feeling better and feeling like herself in the midst of all this brand new life.

A thought struck her, and she glanced over at Gold. He wouldn’t approve if she told him the little eureka moment that had just popped into her head. He’d give her some kind of speech about keeping in contact with the previous life being a very bad idea.

So she decided to keep it to herself and not worry him unduly about what she might be getting up to once she left his little shop.

“Thanks for the paperwork,” she said brightly. “I guess I’ll get going and see what I can find. Maybe Mulan will let me crash on her couch for a bit until I get back on my feet.”

Gold nodded. “I’m sure she will.”

“I guess I’ll see you around,” she said. “Is handing out post-its in the diner a regular thing, or was that just for my benefit this afternoon?”

“No, that’s normal,” Gold said. He gave a little chuckle. “We did say that it was the usual place, after all. We usually meet in a morning though, so that everyone can receive their day’s reaps and then get on with their business. I’m usually there between eight and half-past nine every day. It’s a good chance for everyone to catch up and exchange stories, if nothing else.”

Exchanging stories about reaps gone awry, like Gold had specifically told the others not to tell her just yet, Belle thought with a wry smile.

“Well, I’ll see you there tomorrow,” she said. “Good night, Gold.”

“Good night, Belle.”

She left the shop, but instead of heading in the direction of Mulan’s apartment to beg a bed for the night, she doubled-back and ended up heading towards her own apartment, or at least, the apartment that had been her own up until two and a half weeks ago. She didn’t have the key on her; her material possessions hadn’t crossed over into her ghost state with her and hadn’t magically rematerialized when she had become corporeal again, but Gold had managed to break in easily enough so presumably she would be able to as well.

It took a bit of fumbling, but after much wriggling with a hairpin and a bit of elbow grease, she managed to get the front door open, all the while watching over her shoulder to check that no-one could see her illegally entering a place that she thought, having paid up the lease till the end of the month just before she died, she still had a right to enter.

The place was bare and lifeless, and Belle didn’t know why she had expected it to be exactly the same as it had been when she had died. Naturally, her landlord and her father would have got together to start packing up her things and moving her out of the place. Her furniture would have been sold, or put into storage for Moe to look through later if he couldn’t face the task of doing it now.

All the same, seeing the place look empty, without any trace of the life she had once known in here, made Belle’s heart beat fast and hard in her mouth. It was truly as if she was being wiped from memory, her very existence being washed out of the walls and floors along with everything she owned.

Belle felt tears prick her eyes, and as she sank onto her knees in the middle of the empty living room, she realised that it was the first time she had been alone to deal with her grief since she died. Up until now, she had always had one of the other reapers keeping her company, and now she did not have anyone to lean on.

“Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

Belle jerked her head up on hearing her father’s voice, coming face to face with him for the first time since her death. Well, the first time that he could see her, at least, and he was looking at a stranger.

God, the temptation to go over and throw her arms around him and bawl her eyes out against his shoulder like she had done so many times when she had been a child was so strong, but he was just looking at her with a weariness and a thinly veiled hostility, looking straight through her with no hint of recognition. He was still wearing the same suit he had worn to the funeral earlier in the day, and it did not sit well on him. He’d never been comfortable wearing suits, preferring the dirty casual clothes he wore everyday in the flower shop.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated. “How did you get in?”

“I…” Belle stammered. Why couldn’t she just tell him the truth? Couldn’t she just tell him that she was his daughter, although she looked a little different to him now, and she just wanted her old life back so badly after it had been so unceremoniously taken from her.

But she couldn’t. There was nothing that she could say that would convince him that she wasn’t a lunatic and was actually related to him, and so she didn’t try. Wiping her face on the sleeve of her jumper, she took a deep breath.

“My name’s Lacey,” she said. “I’m with the letting agency, they sent me round to take a look at the place.”

Moe’s features softened a little, but he still looked at her warily.

“Well, I just came over to pick up the last couple of boxes,” he said. “I’ll leave you to whatever it is that you’re doing.”

He disappeared off in the direction of her bedroom and came out with a couple of small, but evidently heavy, cardboard packing crates. Belle could immediately tell what they were; her collection of prized leather-bound first editions. Her heart leapt to her mouth. She didn’t know what he was going to do with them, but they were hers, and she wanted them back. She had got so much pleasure out of them before, they were something she was truly invested in, and she couldn’t bear to part with them.

“You know, I can take those off your hands if you want,” she said nonchalantly.

Moe just gave her an incredulous look.

“These books were Belle’s pride and joy,” he said. “I’m not going to just randomly hand them over to an estate agent I met five minutes ago. Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”

The words felt like a slap in the face, and Belle was left speechless, staring after her father as he made his way down the corridor away from her apartment without looking back.

“I’ve got respect for the dead,” she whispered once he was out of earshot. “I _am_ dead.”

She knew she shouldn’t be angry at him. She knew that she was a stranger to him now, and what he was doing was out of love for her, well, the person she had been in life. That didn’t stop it aching so very badly though. Once it became clear that he wasn’t going to come back and that he had walked out of her existence forever, Belle sat down heavily on the floor again, curling up into a ball and burying her face in her knees to muffle her sobs.

She had come here looking for a home, but all she had found was emptiness. There was no way that she could stay here now, not when everything that had made it special to her was gone.

Belle didn’t look up as she heard footsteps coming down the corridor towards her. The front door was still wide open and anyone entering the apartment building would see her in there. Almost anyone entering the apartment building would know that apartment 3C’s occupant had just died and therefore a young woman crying her eyes out in there probably wouldn’t be too much cause for alarm.

It was only as the steps got closer that Belle recognised the uneven triple step of someone walking with a cane. A pair of shiny black shoes and the ebony leg of a cane came into her vision, and then a moment later, a dark red handkerchief patterned with little black dots was offered. Belle took it and wiped her eyes and nose as Gold lowered himself down onto the floor beside her.

“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked eventually.

“Everyone always tries to go home,” he said. “I did it myself when I died. Going home never works. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen so many times to so many people.”

“Why didn’t you warn me that it would feel so horrible?” Belle sniffed. She must have been amassing quite the collection of Gold’s pocket squares now, but she really didn’t want to give this one back in its current snotty state.

“Would you have listened if I did?” he asked. There was no admonition in his voice, or disappointment. He was just there to pick up the pieces, but he didn’t blame her for being in pieces in the first place.

She shook her head, conceding the point. “No, I probably wouldn’t, you’re right.”

“Just think of it as a rite of passage that we all go through. I’d spare you the pain if I could, but I think we both know that it would be impossible.”

Belle nodded. “Yeah. Thank you for coming after me.”

“You’re welcome. Come on. There’s no use in staying here surrounded by sadness. Mulan’s couch is ready and waiting for you, and I called in a few favours. One of Graham’s colleagues is looking for a roommate. It won’t be a permanent solution, because she’s alive and it tends to be safer to stay amongst our own kind, but it’ll do as a base for the next few months whilst you get back on your feet. She’s a nurse and works a lot of nights, so you probably won’t see her much anyway, but Graham’s vouched for her.”

Belle nodded. It seemed like a much nicer prospect than scouting out the home of someone who had just died. She got to her feet and held out a hand to help Gold off the floor, and together they left the flat. As the door closed and Gold locked it up again behind them, Belle felt a weight lifting off her shoulders, like the last vestiges of her life were finally leaving her behind. She was sad about it, but at the same time, knowing that she had a place to go next made her feel a little more excited by the prospect of a new life. She would miss her old one, certainly. She didn’t think that she would ever not miss it. But she no longer felt quite as adrift as she had done before.

There was a place for her in this new world she’d found herself part of after all.


	4. Chapter 4

Mulan was more than happy to provide a couch for the night for Belle until she could move into her new temporary home, and the two women sat together in front of the TV for a long time into the night, drinking tea and talking about everything that had happened to Belle during the day.

“It is hard,” Mulan said. “I can’t deny that, no-one can. At the beginning, it’s always hard. It’s like you’ve been given a second chance at life, a reprieve from death almost, except you haven’t. You’re still the same person as you were before, and you still want to go and do all the things that you did before, but you can’t, and I think that’s more of a blow than the actual dying part.”

Belle traced a fingertip around the rim of her mug. “It just doesn’t seem fair,” she muttered. “I didn’t ask for this, and now here I am. It’s like death doesn’t come with any perks at all.”

“Well, there are a couple.” Mulan grinned. “You’ll always look this good, for a start. You don’t age if you’re a reaper. You can drink as much as you like: you’ll never get a hangover. You’ll never get sick, and you can shrug off any injuries, including ones that ought to be fatal. Your pain receptors are a bit messed up, so you’ll only feel pain if you notice something happening and your brain thinks ‘hang on, that ought to hurt’. One time, David accidentally chopped two of his fingertips off, without noticing at all, but he just put them back into place and within five minutes it was as if nothing had happened.”

Belle wrinkled her nose. “That sounds disgusting, but I won’t deny that it’s practical.”

“Likewise, if you had any chronic conditions or illnesses before you died, they don’t carry over. The reapers in pulmonary systems and malignant neoplasms are always very happy about that.”

“What about Gold’s leg?” Belle’s brow furrowed. “Surely that would have healed when he died, and he shouldn’t feel pain from it.”

“I think that’s different because it’s an injury,” Mulan said, “and as far as I can tell he’d had it for a really long time before he died. Maybe he’s just got so used to living with it that he’s just continued living with it in the afterlife and hasn’t given any thought to the fact it might have cleared up. Like I said, the brain’s a strange thing when it comes to pain receptors. I don’t know. Gold’s a mysterious one, he always has been, ever since I first joined the group, and according to Ella even before that. Maybe it’s something to do with how he died.”

“How did he die?”

Mulan shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s never told us. We’ve never asked. When you’re dealing with death on a daily basis like we do, there’s not an awful lot that’s taboo, but asking an older reaper how they died isn’t the done thing.”

“Right.” Considering that Belle’s next question was going to be to ask Mulan how she had died, she hastily back-tracked.

“I mean, obviously with reapers in different divisions it’s easy, like Graham obviously had a heart attack, and the reapers in the plague division obviously died from the plague.”

“There’s a plague division?”

“Oh yes. Since there aren’t many deaths from plague these days they tend to spend their days helping out other reapers in long con operations or playing golf.”

“I see…”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to all our quirks eventually,” Mulan said with a grin. “We’re all one big, happy, reaper family at heart. Gold’s the grumpy team dad who looks after everyone even when he pretends not to care. Ella’s the outrageous aunt, David’s the sensible older brother. Graham’s the cousin from the other side of town who hangs out with us all the time because he doesn’t get on with his own family.”

“Can you transfer divisions?” Belle asked.

“You can transfer geographically within the same division with no problems,” Mulan said. “Ella and Gold both started out in the UK and transferred out here after a couple of years, and David actually started out in California. Transferring between divisions is difficult; you have to have been dead for at least seventy-five years and filled a certain number of reaps before you can swap, and even then, you can only swap to the Natural Causes division, because they don’t recruit any of their own reapers.”

That made sense, Belle supposed. All the people dying of natural causes would be very old and probably not suited to reaping work. Becoming a reaper might partially heal you, but nothing could heal old age.

The two women fell into silence until Belle spoke again.

“How long have you been dead, Mulan?”

“Ten years. David’s actually the youngest of the group aside from you, he’s only been dead four years. Ella’s coming up for ninety, and Gold’s just gone past a hundred.”

“And how long is it before you move on?”

Mulan shrugged. “No-one knows. Some people move on pretty quickly. Some people take longer. The plague division are likely never to move on because they can’t fill their quotas; they’ve been hanging around since the last plague. There isn’t really an average. It’s all just one of those mysteries. Ariel died on the Titanic, so it took her just over a hundred years.”

“Wow.” The thought of all those years stretching out ahead of her didn’t fill Belle with all that much confidence.

“The time does go quickly,” Mulan assured her. “One hundred years seems like a lot now, but just think about all the history you’re going to see. If you ever need a laugh, go ask Gold what he was doing during all the major events of the last century. When JFK was assassinated he was reaping a guy who’d got his unmentionables stuck in a washing machine.”

Belle had been taking a sip of tea when Mulan had made this frank statement and almost choked on it, but it did make her laugh. Although it seemed a daunting prospect at first, perhaps there really were things that could be looked forward to in death.

“Well, we’d probably better get to bed if we want to be in time for the post-it hand-out tomorrow,” Mulan said. “Gold really doesn’t like having to chase people down. Jefferson was always notorious for it and watching Gold running down the street waving post-its at him was quite entertaining to watch.”

Belle was about to ask how come she had not met the mysterious Jefferson, whom both David and Mulan had mentioned, but she decided better of it. Maybe it was one of those things, like asking reapers how they’d died.

They said their good nights and Belle settled down on the couch, staring at the ceiling in the dark. So, maybe there were some perks to the afterlife, or at least, some things that would make it a bit more bearable, especially if she was going to be stuck in it for over a hundred years. She certainly couldn’t deny that the people had all been nice and welcoming so far, and if she was going to spend the next century stuck with them, then at least they all seemed friendly enough.

Perhaps that was the whole point of it. Mulan and Gold had both sympathised; they both knew how hard and how unfair the whole situation was. If you were going to spend the rest of your afterlife with these people, then you had to get along with them.

Belle didn’t think that she would have all that much trouble with that.

X

Belle was feeling comparatively positive as she and Mulan made their way towards Granny’s in the morning to collect the day’s post-its.

This life wasn’t a second chance, not really. She wasn’t going to be able to do her life over and make all the right choices this time. She had decided that it was best to stop thinking of this as a new life or even a new stage in her old life.

Belle rationalised it by likening it to being in witness protection. She had a brand-new name and identity and she couldn’t contact anyone from her old life for fear of being found out. She had the rest of the team around her to make sure that she was ok, and she was doing something that would ultimately make the world a better place by ensuring that everyone moved on properly. When she thought about it in those terms, it was slightly easier to live with the new restrictions that she found herself tied down by.

Gold and Ella were already in the diner waiting for them.

“David had to rush off, he’s covering a shift at the animal shelter, but he sends his regards and paid for a coffee for you,” Ella said, pushing the beverage across the table to Belle.

She put her hands around the mug, warming them gratefully, and glancing across at Gold, who was writing out post-its and handing them out.

“Belle, you’ll be with Mulan today,” he said. “I think one more day shadowing on the job and then you’ll be good to start on a few of your own.”

“Really?” Belle didn’t think that she’d be ready to take on reaps of her own for about a month yet.

“Oh yes.” He flashed her a grin, showing a hint of gold in his teeth. “We like to get you started early, throw you in the deep end. Well, the only way you’ll really learn the ins and outs of it is by doing, and it’s best to start sooner rather than later or you’ll never get going.”

Knowing that she had to start reaping in order to stand any chance of filling her quota and moving on, Belle had to concede that point.

“You’re not giving me a lot of time here, Gold, this one’s only an hour away,” Mulan complained, looking down at her two post-its.

“It’s on your way to work,” Gold pointed out. “It’s out of the way for all the rest of us.”

Mulan rolled her eyes. “You know, sometimes I really don’t think that geography is your prime motivation when you dole out the reaps,” she muttered. “Still, I guess we’ve got time for breakfast. Where are you off to today, Ella?”

“The corner of Main Street, darling, and I must dash if I’m going to make it. I bet it’s a falling piano.”

Gold snorted. “You _always_ bet it’s a falling piano.”

“I know. One day I’ll be right.”

She shooed Gold out of the way and left the diner in a swirl of fur and the faint scent of gin and cigarette smoke.

“Is it a falling piano?” Belle asked Gold. He shrugged.

“I get a lot more detail than you do, but even I don’t get that much. I think it’s up to the servants of fate to decide how anyone’s going to go at any given moment. Now, I too must absent myself.” He held up his own post-its. “It’s a busy morning today. Still, good luck with today’s appointments and I’ll see you tomorrow, if not before. Same time, same place.”

He gave Belle a smile as he got up from the table. “It’ll all be fine,” he promised her. “Don’t worry.”

Unbidden, Belle felt a little heat rise in her cheeks under his smile, and she looked away quickly as he left the diner. When she looked back as their breakfasts arrived, Mulan was looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You like him, don’t you?”

“He’s been very kind,” Belle told her oatmeal, refusing to meet her friend’s eyes.

“Hey, I’m not blaming you. He’s the wrong gender for me, but objectively I can see the attraction.”

Belle refused to say anything more on the topic, mainly because there was nothing more to say. She’d only known Gold for a few days, and it was far too soon to be forming any of those sorts of feelings towards him. But he was intriguing, she’d definitely give him that much, and she definitely wanted to find out more about him.

Luckily, Mulan was too absorbed in her breakfast to make any further comments and the two ladies sat in companionable silence for a while until it was time to get going and make the appointment.

“So, where is it that you work?” Belle asked as they made their way down the road away from the diner, towards the address where today’s strange accident would take place, and towards Mulan’s as yet unknown place of employment.

“I’m a personal trainer at the gym around the corner. It’s good because it allows me to schedule appointments around my reaps so it doesn’t look too suspicious when I’m always popping in and out. That’s something you’ll want to bear in mind when you’re looking for a job yourself, get something that’s appointment-based or freelance, or something with shift work where you can easily chop and change and swap with your colleagues at a moment’s notice. David works shifts at the animal shelter, and Gold’s at the shop so he can close up for five minutes any time he likes and nip out to grab some souls.”

Grabbing souls wasn’t the best euphemism for it that Belle had heard so far, and she tried to push it to the back of her mind.

“I guess I can’t just go and apply for my vacant job at the library, then?” she said, feeling slightly mournful at the prospect. She hadn’t really been intending to return there, not after all the warnings that everyone had given her about staying away from her old life, but she couldn’t deny that she was qualified and had the experience. Not that it made any difference of course because she couldn’t exactly quantify her own experience when she was applying under the name of Lacey Chevalier. _Yes, I have five years’ worth of experience doing this exact job, until I suffered the misfortune of dying. Yes, I am dead, please hire me. At least you know I won’t die on the job again._

She shook herself out of the melancholy train of thought.

“I guess changing jobs is one good thing about dying,” Mulan mused. “Well, I guess it depends on the job. Gold can knock up any supporting documents you might need so you can do pretty much anything you want to, apart from maybe brain surgery. Anything within reason,” she amended after a few moments thought. “Anyway, we’re here.”

Belle stared up at the apartment block that they had stopped outside and then looked back down at Mulan’s post-it.

_W. Gibson, Apartment 15, ETD 08:59 AM_

“I suppose this is a naïve question to ask, but how are we going to get inside his or her apartment?” Belle asked.

Mulan grinned. “Watch and learn.”

She pressed the buzzer for number fifteen and waited for a response.

_“What do you want?”_ barked a harsh male voice through the intercom. Belle took a step back at finding their reap so hostile, but Mulan took it all in her stride.

“UPS, I have a package for a W. Gibson.”

_“I’m not expecting anything.”_

“Ok, you don’t have to accept the package, but I still need you to sign the delivery receipt as a non-delivery, sir.”

There was a long pause, and then the grating electronic buzz of the lock clicking open. Mulan opened the door and waved Belle inside.

“So, we’re inside now,” Belle said, “but that still doesn’t help the fact that you’re definitely not a UPS delivery driver and you don’t have a package with you. Or a delivery receipt.”

“If there’s one thing that you’re going to have to learn whilst you’re a grim reaper, Belle, it’s how to lie convincingly,” Mulan said. “Half our job consists of blagging our way into places that we have no real reason to be in.” She paused. “Actually, that would be the perfect job for you if you need legitimate excuses to get into people’s homes.”

“What?”

“Pizza delivery! No-one says no to a pizza they didn’t order. Well, it’s rare, at any rate. All you have to do is rock up in your pizza deliverer outfit with a pizza in hand, and you’ll be good to go.”

“Right.” Belle had to admit that it was a very ingenious solution for both her employment status and the discomfort she felt at conning her way into places, but when she’d been given this new chance at life, working in fast food wasn’t really what she’d had in mind.

“All right, here we go.”

Mulan took her smart phone out of her pocket and opened up the note app to show a blank page, then knocked smartly on W. Gibson’s door.

It was answered by a very old and extremely irritable looking man in a bathrobe, socks and sandals.

“You’re not from UPS,” he said, looking Mulan up and down. Belle decided that it would probably be safer to stand off to one side, but she couldn’t resist peering over the man’s shoulder into his apartment to try and see what it was in there that was going to cause his ignominious demise.

“Yeah, I’m new, they haven’t given me a uniform yet,” Mulan said. She handed over an ordinary capped pen to the man, and in doing so, Belle saw the moment when her fingers brushed over his and the faint little wisp of his soul came away. She held up the smart phone. “Sign here for the non-delivery please.”

“Where’s the package?”

“I left it in the van, since you said you didn’t want it,” Mulan said.

“Wait, wait, I didn’t say I didn’t want it. I just said I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Ok, I’ll go and get it.”

Completely non-plussed by the exchange, Mulan moved away from the door and Belle made to follow her, but something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, roaming around in the man’s apartment behind him. As soon as she turned to look at it, it vanished, but what she had seen of it made for a very disconcerting sight.

“Erm, Mulan?” she began. “Did you see that?”

“About the size of a monkey, looks like a really ugly cross between a lizard and a fish, vanished when you looked directly at it?”

Belle nodded.

“No, I didn’t see it, but I’ve seen enough of them in my time.”

“What the hell is it?” Belle hissed.

“That would be a graveling.”

They were back outside the apartment block now, and Mulan simply looked at her watch as it counted down towards the ETD.

“A what?”

“A graveling. They’re the ones responsible for making sure that the accidents happen on time and on target. Gold calls them the servants of fate. They’re the ones who chew through the cables holding the pianos, for example.”

“Or make sure that the wrenches are in exactly the right place to be knocked over,” Belle murmured, remembering her first reap with David the previous day.

“Exactly. I have to wonder just what this one’s doing inside, but sometimes it’s best not to know,” Mulan mused. “They do have the most extraordinary capacity to set up the most bizarre accidents. Right, I think enough time has passed.”

She pressed the buzzer for fifteen again, but there was no response. It was nine o’clock, the ETD had passed, and it was looking increasingly likely that whatever the graveling had done to cause W. Gibson’s accident had succeeded.

“Is that it?” Belle asked. “Do we just go now?”

“No, we still have to make sure his soul crosses over,” Mulan said. “That can be the trickiest part, sometimes. Some people just refuse to accept that they’re dead.”

“Can I help you?”

A young woman was just coming out of the apartment block.

“Yeah, we’re here to visit Mr Gibson but we can’t get a response,” Mulan said, flashing her ID so quickly that the woman wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was just her driver’s license. “We’re getting a bit worried.”

“OK.” The woman stood back to let them into the building, and Mulan and Belle made their way up to apartment fifteen again. The door was still slightly ajar, and they pushed it open cautiously.

W. Gibson was standing in the middle of the apartment, looking down at himself and then across at his body sitting at the kitchen table. The body was rather blue in the face, showing that he had obviously choked on something. From the bottle of soda and the bottle opener on the counter in front of him, with the cap nowhere in sight, Belle could hazard a guess.

“Come on Mr Gibson,” Mulan said gently, guiding him towards the apartment door. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Mr Gibson looked like he was still having a bit of trouble coming to terms with his sudden demise.

“You’re the UPS girl,” he said eventually as they walked down the corridor towards the elevator with him.

“Yes.”

“Where’s my package?”

“There isn’t a package, Mr Gibson.”

“Oh.”

The elevator dinged open, but instead of the interior that Belle was expecting to see, she saw the ghostly apparition of a small cottage, with a path leading up to the door that was, in true textbook fashion, surrounded by crawling roses.

“Go on, Mr Gibson,” Mulan encouraged. “It’s all over now.”

He tottered into the elevator and the doors shut, cutting off the scene.

“I think we’ll take the stairs down,” Mulan said.

Belle was still deep in thought and didn’t realise that she had walked silently with Mulan all the way to the gym until her friend said her goodbyes, disappearing into the building.

Belle sat down on the steps outside and wondered, trying to reconcile everything that had happened to her before half-past nine in the morning. Death was so quick and random, and it could take anyone at any time, and she and Mulan were there to pick up the pieces and then just had to go on with their every day lives. She supposed that she would get used to it in the end.

She got up and brushed herself down. Today’s mission would be job-hunting. For something with shifts that would allow her to get out for her reaps.

Or pizza delivery.


	5. Chapter 5

Having spent the day in Granny’s scouring all the job adverts in the newspapers and drinking more hot chocolate than was probably healthy, Belle had fallen into something of a daydream and was people watching, wondering how many of the other patrons of the diner were reapers from other divisions, and how many would be meeting their post-it appointment later in the day.

She shivered at the thought and pushed it to the back of her mind, looking pointedly back down at the ads she had circled, tapping a finger against one of them. One of the florists in town was looking for a delivery driver. It wasn’t her father’s, she knew better than to get involved with anything to do with her old life and she didn’t know what Moe might say if the woman from the housing agency who’d ostensibly broken into his dead daughter’s apartment suddenly turned up on his doorstep looking for a job.

All the same, floristry was a small business and all the shop-owners tended to know each other, and it would be likely that she would meet Moe at some point during her time there. She crossed through the ad and was about to move onto the next one when someone slid into the booth opposite her. It was Graham.

“How’s it going?” he asked. “Getting used to all the ins and outs of reaper life?”

Belle nodded slowly. “I think so. Thanks for getting me somewhere to stay, by the way.” She looked down at the paper again. “Now I just need to find something to let me pay rent on it.”

“Something will turn up,” Graham said cheerfully. “But speaking of a place to stay, that’s the real reason I came over here. Dorothy’s just come off her shift, so I’ll take you over to have a look around the place now if you like.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

Dorothy Gale was a no-nonsense emergency department nurse and although her manner was somewhat direct, Belle thought that they would get on all right together as roommates. As Gold had said, it was unlikely that their paths would cross much during the day, and if Belle could get herself a job soon, then even better. Moving in took no time at all, and once more, Belle was struck by just how much of her old life she had lost. All she had was a suitcase full of clothes, none of her photos of her family, or her trinkets, or any of her prized books.

She was going to have to start from scratch again and rebuild her life over. She supposed that there were some advantages to that. She could start new hobbies, reinvent herself completely if she wanted, but at that moment, staring at the blank walls in her new room, Belle really didn’t want that. She wanted all her old things back.

Belle wasn’t sure what it was that brought her meandering through the town towards Gold’s shop. Maybe it was just the desire to have something, anything, that could make the place her own, and something unique from the antique shop would certainly fit the bill.

It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to spend some time with Gold. She wanted to ask his advice, a new recruit looking for mentoring from their nominate boss. It was a purely professional interest, that was all.

All the same, she was rather disappointed when she arrived at the shop to find the door locked and a sign in Gold’s spidery writing informing her that he’d be back in five minutes. She supposed that he had gone out to a reap, so she sat down on the steps to wait, getting out the paper again. Pizza delivery was looking increasingly like the best option, and she sighed. She really was starting from scratch again.

“Hello there.”

Belle looked up to see Gold watching her with an amused expression, and she scrabbled to her feet, trying to look like she had not just been sitting on his doorstep resembling a lost sheep.

“Hi.”

“Did today’s adventures with Mulan go well?” Gold asked as he unlocked the door.

“Yes, no problems. W. Gibson went quietly, and I’ve moved into my new place with Graham’s colleague.”

“Things seem to be moving on quite nicely then,” Gold said. “So, what brings you to my shop?”

“Oh, you know. Just browsing.”

Gold quirked an eyebrow as they entered the shop, but he didn’t say anything, just moving around behind the counter and hooking his cane over it. Belle was itching to ask him about it, thinking about her conversation with Mulan the previous evening about all the perks and limitations of the undead body, but when it came down to it, she barely knew the man and it wouldn’t be polite to be asking such personal questions so soon.

She turned her attention to the trinkets and nick-nacks that lined the walls and shelves, not really taking any of it in, her mind miles away.

“Mulan says you’ve been dead for over a hundred years,” she said eventually, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen in the shop.

“I have. I died in 1916.”

Right in the middle of the First World War. Belle could hazard a guess at how he died, but she knew better than to ask.

They fell into silence again as Belle continued to look at all the items in the shop, but it was a companionable quiet, and Belle didn’t feel as much awkwardness as perhaps she might have done in any other circumstances. There really wasn’t anything better than dying for putting things into perspective.

Her eyes alighted on a tea set in a display cabinet, at a markedly lower price than some of the other things in the place but still out of her budget range, and she looked at the delicate china, white with a blue pattern.

“Do you like it?” Gold asked. Belle nodded.

“It’s lovely. How come it’s so cheap? Well, so much cheaper than everything else. Considering I’m not earning at the moment I should probably be somewhat thriftier in my tastes.”

“It’s incomplete. Missing a cup that got chipped when I was setting it out for sale.”

“That’s a shame. Couldn’t you repair it?”

“I couldn’t find the chip. I still have the cup though.”

He went over to a cupboard behind the counter and took out a single teacup in the same white and blue pattern as the rest of the set, a very noticeable chip taken out of the rim. Belle smiled when she saw it, something imperfect in this pristine world of perfect restoration and conservation.

“How much for it?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“How much for the chipped cup? It’s not like you’re going to sell it to anyone else and although I’m generally one for supporting local businesses and the like, the rest of the set would stretch my wallet slightly.”

Gold just gave a huff of soft laughter. “If you want it that much, it’s on the house,” he said. “You’d be doing me a favour; it’s only taking up storage space.”

He wrapped the cup up in paper for her, although seeing as though it was already damaged it seemed like a pointless exercise, and Belle slipped it into her bag with the job ads. It was a small thing, but it was something that was hers and something connected with her new life, rather than her old one. It was her first step towards rebuilding herself, and she felt very proud that she had made it.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow for the post-it hand-out then?”

Gold nodded. “Yes, you will. Good evening, Belle.”

“Good evening, Gold.”

There was a pause then, a moment in which Belle thought that perhaps she ought to say something else, although she didn’t know what she was going to say. It looked like Gold was going to say something too, and then Belle remembered what Mulan had said in the diner that morning. She broke their shared gaze with an embarrassed cough and hurried out of the shop, only sneaking a look back over her shoulder once she was safely outside with the door between her and Gold. He wasn’t looking at her, absorbed in something on the counter, and Belle rushed away before she could make a fool of herself any further.

Dorothy was still in when Belle arrived back at the flat, trawling through Internet dating profiles with an air of frustration.

“It’s kind of hard to meet people when you work shifts in a hospital,” she grumbled. “So far, every date I’ve had off here has been terrible, but something keeps me coming back. Do you ever have this problem, Lacey?”

Belle shook her head. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried Internet dating.” Truth be told she hadn’t really been one for dating even when she’d been alive. The interest that Gold had sparked in her wasn’t exactly a frequent feeling, but one that she had felt often enough in the past to recognise it for what it was, causing her to try and tamp it down. It would have been terribly unprofessional.

Although, were they really colleagues? Reaping was sort of a job, although they didn’t get paid for it. Was Gold her boss? Mentor? Something undefined that she definitely shouldn’t be thinking about in that way? Or did being dead blur the lines somewhat? It was all too complicated to think on and Belle determined to put it to the back of her mind.

“Oh well.” Dorothy clicked on a profile seemingly at random and began to type an introductory message. “Let’s see how we get on with this lady in red.”

Belle left her new roommate to it, and retreated into her bedroom, taking the teacup out of her bag and putting it in pride of place on her nightstand. Soon enough things would join it, but for now at least she had the feeling that she was making the place her own.

Tomorrow she would see Gold again, and she would officially begin her career as a grim reaper, receiving her first post-it.

X

Belle was the first person to arrive in the diner the next morning, perhaps out of an anticipation to get her first reap over and done with as soon as possible, although objectively she knew that getting there early wouldn’t necessarily guarantee that her reap was going to be early in the day. She might be hanging around until the evening to meet her post-it date, and she wondered how she was going to fill the time.

Perhaps a part of her early rising was also out of a desire to impress Gold with her dedication to the job. Now that she had accepted that this was what she was going to be doing for the next hundred or so years, she thought that she probably ought to show a little enthusiasm for it in the hopes of maybe currying favour with the powers that be that controlled the reapers’ quotas and getting to move on a bit quicker.

Gold was the next to arrive and the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile when he saw her sitting alone in their usual booth.

“All ready for the first time?” he asked. “You always remember your first.”

Belle raised an eyebrow at him and he wrinkled his nose. “All right, perhaps that wasn’t the best analogy I could have chosen, but it is true.”

“What was your first?” Belle asked.

“Accidental drowning,” Gold replied, remarkably cheerfully all things considered, but when one had seen as much death as he had and helped so many souls to cross over, then it probably stopped affecting one quite as much as it was still affecting Belle. “The young man in question had decided to dive into the lake at the foot of a waterfall. It would have been a very impressive feat if he had managed it, and all his friends were very much looking forward to witnessing this miraculous jump. Unfortunately, he hit his head on the rocks on the bottom.”

Belle grimaced. “Ouch. I hope my first one is slightly cleaner than that.”

“Clean deaths are few and far between in external influences, I’m afraid.” Gold had opened his notebook and begun writing out the day’s post-its. “That’s our lot in this life. At least it always adds an element of adventure, as Ella would say. Graham’s constantly complaining that his reaps are boring because there’s no guesswork involved.”

“That’s morbid.”

“We’re dead, Belle. Morbid is in our very nature.” He handed her a yellow post-it. “There we are. Your very first reap.”

Belle looked down at the note.

_A. Morgan, North Road Dental Surgery, ETD 10:56 AM_

“How on earth am I meant to get into a dentist’s office?” she asked. “I’m not a dentist, nor do I know enough about dentistry to be able to blag it with any degree of confidence.”

“You’ll be fine,” Gold assured her. “If in doubt, take refuge in audacity. If you look and sound as if you’re meant to be somewhere then nine times out of ten, people will believe that you’re meant to be there. If you don’t have that assurance and confidence, then they’re going to suspect that something’s wrong. The more official you can make yourself seem, then the better you’ll get on.”

“Right. You know, drama was never my strong subject. There’s a reason why I became a librarian and not an actress.” She paused. “Can’t someone come with me as back-up? I know that death is non-transferrable, and I’d do the actual reap, but if someone could be there to give me some tips, that would help.”

Gold shook his head. “The first reap is one you’ve got to do on your own,” he said, and Belle just looked at him, wide-eyed.

“I’ve only witnessed two!” she yelped. “Considering that everyone’s told me how many different ways that there are for people to die in this division, I don’t think I’ve really had enough training yet!”

“Just be observant,” Gold said. “That’s going to be your best asset in this line of work. Watch out for the gravelings; you’ll only be able to see them out of the corner of your eye but if you can catch a glimpse of one, then it might give you a clue as to who’s going to die and how they’re going to do it.”

“What if it all goes wrong?” Although Belle had felt comparatively safe and at ease whilst she had been going around watching the other reapers at work, now that she was going to have to go it alone, all kinds of things that she had never thought about until now were making themselves known in a display of blind panic. “What if I get accused of murder or something?”

“I can safely say that none of my reapers have ever been accused of murder whilst I have been the head reaper of this post-it crew,” Gold said. “I’m not about to let you be the first to break that record.”

Belle nodded and took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. “Wait, does that mean that reapers from other departments have been accused of murder?”

“There have been a few sticky situations in other areas in the past,” Gold admitted. “But never in Storybrooke. We pride ourselves on keeping our reapers out of trouble.”

Not entirely convinced that everything was going to be all right at the dentist’s office, Belle just sat back and stared at her post-it note, taking it all in and trying to formulate back-up plans of back-up plans to get A. Morgan’s soul out of his or her body and onto the afterlife without anyone noticing.

David and Mulan arrived within a few minutes of each other and both gave Belle wide grins when they saw that she had received her first assignment.

“You’re almost officially one of us,” Mulan said. “We’ll have to go out tonight and celebrate you taking your first steps into the reaping world. Will you join us, Gold? Ella will definitely come, she’s always up for anything that might involve the slightest possibility of gin in any shape or form; she’ll be there the moment we suggest it.”

Gold shook his head. “I really don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Oh, why not, Gold?” There was an amused smile on David’s face and Belle wondered if he knew something that she didn’t. “And don’t say that you’re too old, because you’re too old for everything by this point, and it never stops Ella.”

“That’s because Ella’s still stuck in the roaring twenties,” Gold muttered.

“Come on, Gold,” Mulan wheedled as she took her post-it note from him. “We’re celebrating Belle’s first reap! You can’t miss out on that.”

Gold rolled his eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

“Did someone say celebration?” Ella wafted in, wearing a different fur coat this time.

“I told you,” Gold said. “She can hear someone mentioning gin from three miles away.”

“Don’t be a stick in the mud, darling, it’s most unbecoming. You yourself were fond of a little tipple back in the day.”

Mulan left Ella and Gold to their arguing and turned to Belle.

“The Rabbit Hole tonight?” she suggested. “Drinks are on us to celebrate your induction.”

Belle nodded. “Yes. That sounds good.” Since she had a new life now, she might as well live it. There wasn’t going to be a lot of point in making herself miserable for the next however many years.

“Great! Now, go and get your reap. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

Belle wasn’t feeling quite so confident as she left the diner and made her way through the town towards the dentist. She was going to be far too early for her post-it appointment and she mulled around the street for a while. There was a post office a little way down from the dentist with its windows full of job ads, and Belle took a look at them. They were mainly for odd jobs and handymen, and although that would definitely give her some flexibility, she also wasn’t the greatest with a hammer and nails.

Then she saw it, and it was as if all her Christmases had come at once. The post office itself was looking for new postal workers. Bicycle and uniform provided. It would mean a lot of very early mornings, but it would give her the freedom she needed to get around to her reaps (and a bicycle with which to do it) and would allow her to get inside people’s homes. She wouldn’t even have to fake UPS deliveries like Mulan had.

She was about to go in and inquire, but then she looked at the time and dashed back towards the dentist instead. It was almost showtime. Belle glanced at the names of the dentists on the board. No A. Morgans there.

The receptionist was on the phone and paying no attention to any of the patients in the waiting room; her name badge read Tracey, so she was unlikely to be the unlucky victim. Since she was distracted, Belle leaned casually over the reception desk to look at the appointments book. Bingo. Adelaide Morgan, appointment at 10:50 AM.

Now all Belle had to do was find the Adelaide Morgan in question and take her soul before her appointment. The clock was ticking, and there were three other women in the waiting room. Any one of them could have been the mysterious Adelaide, although Belle thought that it was likely to be the elderly lady in the corner, with a regal bearing and a fur coat remarkably similar to Ella’s. Perhaps that was what Ella would have looked like if she’d lived to old age.

Belle took a seat in the waiting room next to the water cooler; no-one seemed to pay any attention to the fact she hadn’t checked in at reception and had ostensibly just wandered in off the street and sat down. She had a plan, and she just hoped that it was going to work.

A dentist came out of the one of the offices.

“Adelaide Morgan?”

Belle was right, it was the elderly lady in the corner. As she tottered towards the dentist, Belle rose from her seat and went over to her.

“Here, let me help you.”

Although Belle had seen souls being removed before, she didn’t really know exactly how the process worked. As she touched Adelaide’s arm, she concentrated hard, and felt something pulsing beneath her hand. The only word that she could use to describe it was bright, even though she couldn’t see it, and she held on a little tighter, drawing the soul out and watching the wispy white dissipate around her hand. She had taken her first soul, and it had come almost by instinct.

Having delivered Adelaide safely into the dentist’s office, Belle sat down to wait again. She really didn’t want to know what was going to happen in there to cause the poor woman’s demise, and when she saw a graveling bounce out of the window out of the corner of her eye, she scowled at it.

From inside the office came the crackling sound of electricity, and then all the lights in the waiting room went out and the dentist shot out of the office as fast as his feet could take him, his hands smoking slightly as he screamed for Tracey the receptionist to call an ambulance. Behind him, at a much slower pace, came Adelaide. Belle got up to meet her.

“It’s all right,” she soothed the soul. “It’s over now. I’ll take you to your lights.”

Adelaide nodded gratefully and accepted Belle’s arm, and together they left the building. A beach scene was spread out in front of them, and Belle let her charge go. Once the lights had faded, Belle didn’t know what to do. She just stood there looking at the road, misty drizzle beginning to fall all around her.

“Well done.”

She whirled around and saw Gold waiting outside the dentist.

“I thought you said no-one was going to come with me?” she accused.

“No-one did,” he pointed out. “You did the entire reap by yourself, and you did it very well. I just thought you might like a friendly face in the aftermath.”

Belle smiled. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. You’re now a fully-fledged reaper. Congratulations.”

They walked off down the street together, back towards the post office and Belle’s possible new line of work, and they stopped outside. Belle took a deep breath. If she could take a soul on her own, then she could say her piece.

“You know, it would be really great if you could come to the Rabbit Hole tonight.”

Gold nodded. “I’ll see you there.”

And despite whatever misgivings Belle had had, when she arrived in the bar to the cheers of the other reapers, Gold was right there with them.  


	6. Chapter 6

“I always like these kind of reaps. You can never tell what you’re going to get. There’s always so much variety involved. The great outdoors is just one big death trap.”

“There’s no need to sound quite so excited by the prospect, you know. And I can assure you that it is highly unlikely that today’s death will be by falling piano.”

“Don’t spoil my fun, Mr Gold. There’ll be a piano one day.”

“Not in an open park, there won’t be.”

“Spoilsport.”

It was a bitterly cold and frosty morning and Gold and Ella were trudging around the local park in search of Gold’s reap of the day. The park being such a large place to cover with a lot of people in it, he had seconded Ella’s help to expedite the identification process. Although reapers always worked alone in the sense that their assignments were non-transferrable - not even Gold could transfer his own once he’d assigned them to himself - they frequently called on their colleagues for assistance in larger scale operations such as this one.

Ella had a rare day with no reaps and had been more than happy to come along to offer Gold her assistance. She didn’t exactly have anything else to do all day; her various stocks and shares bought under various fake names were doing very well even if she did say so herself, and the offshore investments needed barely any caretaking.

Considering how much she seemed to spend on a weekly basis, Gold really wasn’t sure how come she’d ended up becoming so shrewd with money, but he knew better than to ask. If it kept her afloat, then he wasn’t going to question the legality of it. Hell, they were all floating along the boundary of illegality all the time, since they didn’t actually exist in the grander scheme of things.

“Who are we looking for again?” Ella asked. She hooked her arm through Gold’s and he rolled his eyes but let her have her whims. They’d been reaping together for so long now that they were well-versed in all of each other’s strange habits. It had been Ella’s idea for them to come over to the States and try their luck with the American dream, getting away from all the sadness and misery that surrounded the remains of their lives across the pond. It had been a difficult journey at times, Gold would never deny that, but despite all the ups and downs, Ella’s friendship had never wavered, and they had stuck together through thick and thin. Although Mulan was the person that Gold would call upon as his second-in-command should anything require a deputy, Ella would always be his closest friend.

Gold showed her the post-it, which was foretelling the demise of M. Schneider in the east corner of Lionsgate Park in approximately twenty minutes’ time. Although it seemed that there was plenty of time to spare, the park was a large place and narrowing it down to the east corner didn’t help in the slightest. They’d been wandering around the east corner for a while now, and whilst they had come across many dedicated joggers and cyclists braving the cold in the name of fitness, they were still no closer to finding M. Schneider.

Something caught the corner of Gold’s eye but when he turned to look at it, it was gone.

“Graveling at three o’clock,” he muttered under his breath, and Ella stopped in her tracks, forcing him to stop as well where she was holding onto his arm. Ella had always been the best at seeing the gravelings. She’d sort of been able to see them when she was alive as well. She swore blind that she’d seen one just before she’d died, and given the clarity with which she could always see them now, Gold was quite prepared to believe her. It wasn’t unheard of for the living to be able to see the creatures, it was just very rare.

“It’s in the trees,” she said under her breath. “I think we’re looking at a low hanging branch knocking off a cyclist.”

“Now, if we could just get all the cyclists to wear name tags, that would make life easier,” Gold muttered.

“It’s a shame we don’t have any races around here,” Ella mused. “Then all the cyclists would have their names written on their backs.”

“They’d also be travelling far too quickly for me to grab the M. Schneider in question,” Gold pointed out.

The reached a bench by the side of the path and sat down. Sometimes it was easier to let the reap come to them, rather than actively searching for them. He continued to look around. A woman with a pushchair was strolling along the path, and Gold raised his eyes up to a higher power that he had stopped believing in quite a long time ago.  _Please don’t let it be her, and please, please don’t let it be the kid._

He had to check. He steeled himself and got up, moving along to meet her in the path.

A glance at her neck showed a chain with the name  _Sarah_. So far, so good.

“I’m sorry,” Gold said with feigned self-consciousness, “I’ve got lost in here, can you point me towards the south exit?”

“Sure.” The young mother pointed back over her shoulder. “Just keep going in a straight line that way and you’ll hit the gate.”

Gold smiled, and the child in the pushchair - probably a boy from the colour scheme and dinosaur prints - giggled. “Thank you. You have a lovely child there. What’s his name?”

“This is Thomas. Are you gonna say hello, Thomas?”

Thomas burbled something and waved gleefully, and Gold let out an inward sigh of relief. They were both safe from fate this time around.

It was then that he saw it. A cyclist on a performance bike was pelting down the road towards them, and a branch had just conveniently dropped out of a tree and fallen into his path. The front tyre hit and threw him off balance, and he came careening down the gravel towards them, out of control.

The good thing about having been a reaper for so long was that Gold had witnessed enough deaths to be able to act in the spur of the moment to make sure that the right person met the right end. Shoving mother and pushchair out of the way, he managed to grab a touch of the cyclist’s arm as he practically somersaulted out of the saddle and landed where the pushchair had been a moment before, the bike landing on top of him with a crunch.

Other runners and walkers raced over on witnessing the accident, and after ascertaining that Sarah and Thomas were all right, Gold left them alone to deal with the fallout and ambulance calling, going over to where Ella was happily chatting to the deceased cyclist.

“Mr Gold, this is Marty Schneider. Marty, this is Mr Gold who pulled your soul out of your body just before you died.”

“Ella, you’ve been doing this for nearly ninety years and your tact still needs work,” Gold said.

“But Gold, you didn’t see yourself!” Ella protested. “It was one of the best reaps I’ve ever seen! Such split second thinking and the timing was spot-on. It really was wonderful to witness. It’s a shame I wasn’t recording it for posterity.”

“Ella, there’s a phrase, ‘when you’re in a hole, stop digging’. Your hole is getting ever deeper and I’m advising you to put the spade down.”

Ella huffed. “All right, all right. But we’re picking up this conversation again later, you know.”

She dropped back and joined the crowd milling about around Marty’s body. She’d always had a fascination for death and had taken to the reaping lifestyle much more easily than any of the other reapers Gold had worked with during his long career.

“Am I really dead?” Marty asked, no doubt somewhat shellshocked from his encounter with Ella.

“Unfortunately you are. There’s no getting around that. Now, it’s time for you to go on to whatever comes next for you.”

“What does come next?”

“That’s entirely up to you.”

“Am I going to heaven?”

“As I said, that’s entirely up to you. I’m responsible for delivering you to your final destination, but I make no claims to know what it is.”

Marty gave him a suspicious look. “Are you sending me to hell?”

“No, I’m not paid enough to have that kind of power.”

“Right.” Marty finally conceded to follow Gold away from the scene of his death. “How much do you get paid?”

“Nothing,” Gold said. “We’re providing a public service free of charge.”

“Right.” They had reached another bench and Marty sat down, still taking it all in. Gold sat beside him; the cold had always bothered his ankle. “So, am I a ghost then?”

“In a manner,” Gold said. “You’re a soul without a body.”

“So can I haunt people?”

“No. It’s time for you to move on. You can’t hang around here haunting people or passing messages.”

“But what about unfinished business and all that?”

“Do you have any unfinished business?”

“I have half a leftover pizza in the fridge!”

“I’m sure that there’s going to be enough pizza to last for several lifetimes wherever you’re going.”

“But it was a really good pizza!”

“Marty, you’re dead. There’s no way to make this easy, but let me tell you that even if you did hang around on the earthly plane for longer than is advisable, there is no way that you would be able to eat that pizza.”

Marty spent a few minutes letting this sink in.

“Oh.”

“It’s all right. I accept that it’s a lot to take in. Come on. Shall we move on and get you reunited with some pizza?”

No two deaths were ever the same. There were some people who had trouble accepting what had just happened to them, and they were always harder to deal with because they needed a gentle guiding hand that Gold just didn’t have. After a hundred years in the business he thought that he should have built up at least some acumen in that area, but he’d also learned that some of the recently deceased did actually appreciate a more direct approach, rather than pussyfooting around the fact that they were dead.

You couldn’t force someone to move on to their lights; it didn’t work like that. There was no fast track button, as much as Gold might want to hasten their moving on sometimes. Most of the time he didn’t begrudge people needing a little time to get to grips with the idea, but he knew that it was better for souls to move on as soon as possible. He had seen first-hand the problems that could be caused by a soul hanging around for too long after death, as the longer they stayed, the more attached to the world they became and the more anguished they became when they could no longer interact with it. It became harder and harder to get them to move on, even though staying was more painful to them than moving on would be. The problem was getting the souls to realise that.

“So I can’t leave any notes or anything?” Marty asked.

Gold shook his head.

“Oh.” Marty appeared to be weighing up the pros and cons of staying on the earthly plane unable to do anything and moving on to a place where there was, according to Gold, limitless pizza. Eventually he stood up and walked away, and Gold heard the familiar reassuring swoosh of his lights sweeping him up and onto whatever came next for him. Sometimes you just had to let them come to terms with it in their own time, and no amount of chivvying along from the reapers would help.

The ambulance crew were rushing along the path with a stretcher; Gold had no idea where they would have parked up, and Ella came back over to him.

“Shall we make a judicious exit?” she asked, offering a hand to help him off the bench, and as they moved away at a fair pace, Gold could see the young woman with the pushchair looking around for the mysterious man who had pushed her and her child out of the wayward cyclist’s path.

It was an advantage to being a reaper that they could fade into the background. Gold had never been quite sure what it was that let them blend into crowds so well, it certainly wasn’t any kind of conscious supernatural power. He supposed that it could have been honed through years of careful concealment, but even Ella, who was so outrageous that surely anyone who met her would remember her for decades to come, still managed to blend in seamlessly when she needed to.

“So, Mr Gold,” Ella began, and Gold could tell from her highly conspiratorial tone of voice that he was probably not going to enjoy the line of questioning she was about to launch into.

“Yes, Ms de Ville?”

“About our new recruit.”

“What about Belle?”

Ella rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded distinctly like ‘men’, before giving a sigh. “How’s she settling in? How’s she getting on? How are you finding her?”

“She seems to be coming to terms with it all much better now that she’s found her feet and has a place to stay and a job,” Gold said. “Her first reap went off without any hitches which has given her the confidence to go out and keep reaping. It’s always a problem if the first reap goes badly, it can set them back weeks.”

“Good, good,” Ella said, although Gold knew that she wasn’t really concerned with that particular part of Belle’s settling into the reaper group. She’d been chatting quite happily to her this morning when they’d done the day’s handout, and had no doubt ascertained all of this information for herself. For all her pretensions to being soaked in gin all the time, Ella was incredibly shrewd and observant, which had always served her well in their current vocation. She was especially good at reading people who didn’t want to be read, and Gold was one of them.

“So what do you think of her?” Ella asked.

“She has all the makings of a very competent reaper.”

“Gold, if anyone just gave a masterclass in wilfully misunderstanding a question, that was it. I don’t want your professional opinion. I just want to know what you think about her as a person.”

“I haven’t really spent enough time with her to form an opinion,” Gold replied stiffly, really not wanting to be drawn into this line of questioning.

“You like her.”

“That is not what I said.”

“You don’t need to say it. You’ve been making moon eyes at her over the table for the last week when you think she’s not looking, and I’ve seen you staring wistfully after her when she rides off on her little postie’s bike. And there’s also the small matter of you avoiding her. If you want to spend more time with her to form an opinion then you’d do better to actually spend some time with her.”

Gold sighed. “If you have already jumped to all of these erroneous conclusions, Ella, why are you asking me?”

“Because I want to hear the words from your own mouth. There’s something very satisfying about that.”

“You are absolutely incorrigible, did you know that?”

“It’s why you love me, Gold, and you know it.”

They had left the park by this point and were making their way towards the antique shop to open up for the day. Gold wondered if he ought to concede the point now or try to fight it a little bit more. It was a foregone conclusion that Ella would win the battle of wits in the end; it was rare that she didn’t, but he couldn’t decide whether continuing the charade would be worth the extra effort.

“I believe I’ve made my view of commencing relationships after death abundantly clear over the last few years, Ella,” he began as a way of trying to obfuscate around the subject.

“Yes, you have, but you’ll notice that all those relationships you took a dim view of, quite rightly, were relationships with people who were still alive. You and Belle are both reapers; so what’s the harm in it?”

“She’s half my age.”

“Gold, think about it logically - you are approaching one hundred and fifty. Belle is thirty. The age difference is laughable and therefore the least of your worries. You are both dead and you are both functionally immortal. You are going to be forty-eight for the rest of your time on this earth. Belle is going to be thirty for the rest of her time on this earth. I think when you’re dead, age is negligible. What else is stopping you?”

Gold sighed. “I don’t know, Ella, and I don’t want to continue this conversation right now, it’s inappropriate.”

Ella looked around the shop.

“We’re entirely alone and I’m your oldest friend, when is it going to be appropriate?”

“When I’m off my face on whisky,” Gold muttered.

“Right.” Ella sat down unceremoniously on Gold’s workbench in the middle of all his forgery equipment. “You know, Gold, I think you’ve been dead for so long that you’ve forgotten how to live.”

“I have not!” Gold protested.

“For all you tell new reapers not to hold on to their past lives so tightly, I think you keep hold of a lot of things from your own.” Ella’s tone had changed, losing the teasing note that had been ever-present up until now. She wasn’t chastising him for the hang-ups that were preventing him from moving on; she genuinely cared about them and wanted him to be happy and stop sabotaging himself without even knowing it.

Gold gave another long sigh, leaning on the bench beside her.

“It’s been a long time since I last dated, Ella, and back in those days it wasn’t even called dating. The phenomenon didn’t exist. I have no experience of it. I haven’t been in this position for over a century. When I was last ‘dating’, Queen Victoria was on the throne.”

“It’s never too late to try new things.” Ella nudged him with her foot. “This is a long afterlife that we’re leading here,” she said sagely. “You might as well have company in it now that you have the chance.”

Gold stared down at the floor, unable to think of a way around Ella’s logic.

“She couldn’t possibly want me.”

“You can’t possibly know that. Also, I think you’d be surprised. Mulan said she saw something there the very first morning.”

Gold turned to Ella, looking incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

“I never lie about matters of the heart, Mr Gold. I might tease and joke, but outright lying would be in very poor taste. Mulan is certain that the newest member of our little crew has been nursing a little bit of a crush on you since day one.”

Gold wasn’t quite sure what to make of this information. He’d never really given any thought to the idea that Belle might possibly like him back. He’d always accepted it as being beyond the realms of possibility, probably because he hadn’t thought about someone in the way he thought about Belle for so very long. All the mechanics and gears of romance in his mind were rusted and only now screeching into life again.

“It’s not impossible, you know,” Ella said. “There’s a lot about you to like. Why do you think I stuck around so long? You’re attractive, and despite the prickly demeanour, you care, Gold. So much. I don’t think that even you realise just how much you care about people, and you spend so long pretending that you don’t, that you’re the rough, gruff boss. But you take care of us, you always have. It’s the paternal instinct, it’s never gone away. And now you’ve met Belle and your feelings towards her are not at all paternal, and you’re not quite sure what to do with that.”

Ella had hit the nail on the head. He was completely out of his depth here and he was floundering desperately, not knowing what the next move ought to be.

The sound of the shop bell tinkling brought him out of his melancholy reverie and he moved away from the workbench, coming through into the main shop. Ella followed him out leisurely.

“Hi Gold,” Belle had come inside in her postal service uniform, her bike chained up outside the shop. “I finished my rounds and I’ve still got a few hours to while away before my reap; I hope you don’t mind me hanging out in here? It’s all just so fascinating.”

Ella gave Gold a wry smile.

“I think I ought to be getting on,” she said. “Places to go, people to see…”

If she was trying to be subtle then she was failing horrifically, but then nothing about Ella was ever subtle so perhaps Belle didn’t notice.

“You’re very welcome,” he said, once they had said their goodbyes to Ella and she was outside and definitely no longer within eavesdropping distance. “And it’s Alistair.”

“Sorry?”

“My first name. You can call me Alistair.”

Belle smiled. “Alistair. It suits you.”

It was strange to hear his name from Belle’s lips. He’d been going by just Gold for so long among the reapers that most of them didn’t even think about the possibility of him having a first name. He didn’t know if he’d ever actually told Mulan and David. Ella knew, but she only ever used it when she was cross with him.

Somehow it felt right that Belle knew, and knew that she was permitted to use it. It was a first step, although towards what, Gold was not entirely sure.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: assault. 
> 
> Also, we learn the circumstances of Mulan's death.

Belle had discovered that in the few weeks since she had become a reaper, she had spent an awful lot of time hanging around and not doing all that much. Getting herself a job had helped to fill up her mornings, but once she’d finished her post round, there wasn’t a lot for her to do for the rest of the day.

She supposed that one of the problems with being dead was that she didn’t have all that many friends that she could chat to, and Belle had always been a sociable person who loved talking to people and learning their stories. It was one of the reasons why she had become a librarian in the first place. She wanted a job where she got to meet people.

Sure, she met quite a lot of people on her post round, but just saying hello when you were delivering their parcels didn’t have quite the same resonance as actually holding a conversation with someone whilst you were recommending books to them or helping them find something old and obscure in the periodicals section.

Belle was around people all the time, both the living and the dead, but she didn’t have anyone she could call a friend.

There was Alistair, of course, and Belle found herself going over to his shop after she had finished work most days. He was always happy to receive her, and they’d spent hours talking about old books and the trinkets in his shop, and reminiscing about all the history that Alistair had lived through. He had so many fascinating stories to tell her, and although he had never reaped anyone famous, he knew reapers who had.

Today though, as Belle’s feet took her away from the flat she shared with Dorothy and into the direction of the town, she decided against going to Alistair’s shop. Pretty soon it was going to be hard to hide the fact that her feelings towards him were definitely not of an innocent or a professional nature, so it was probably best not to spend too much time with him in case he thought that she was stalking him. They saw each other every day at the post-it handout at any rate, so it wouldn’t be as if she would never see him, and it would make their interactions more meaningful.

She sighed. She was probably overthinking it. She’d been overthinking it ever since she came to the conclusion that she liked him and realised she had no idea where to go from there or what to do with the information. It was for that reason that she was now seeking out Mulan. Mulan might not have been dead for as long as Alistair, but she definitely seemed to have her head screwed on straight when it came to all the logistics of going about an everyday sort-of life.

Belle really didn’t want to ask Ella for advice. Not only would the gossip travel through the reaper grapevine faster than the speed of light, she didn’t think that Ella’s advice would be particularly useful, since most of her words of wisdom seemed to involve gin in some shape or form.

Mulan didn’t look all that surprised to see her when she came out of the gym, but Belle had learned that very little shocked Mulan. She was as stoic and unruffled as they came, and it was evidenced in the calm way that she went about her reaps. She never panicked.

Belle was trying not to panic, but there had been a few close calls whilst she was still learning the ropes. Taking refuge in audacity was all very well, but she’d always been told that she was a terrible liar and hiding behind her postal service uniform was turning out to be the best method of getting people to trust her that she’d tried.

“Hi,” Mulan said, meeting her at the bottom of the steps that led up to the gym. “Are you done for the day too?”

Belle nodded. “Yeah. I thought I’d come and see how you were. We haven’t really hung out lately, except for at the morning meeting.”

She didn’t really want to admit that she was lonely. Dorothy was a nice enough roommate, but as Alistair had said when he had first told her about her prospective new home, she was alive, and Belle really didn’t want to be getting involved with too many people who were alive in case her cover got blown.

The problem was that it didn’t leave all that many people for her to classify as friends. Just her fellow reapers, who were also nice enough, but she didn’t really know them all that well. It was time to make an effort to rectify that.

“Yeah, it’s a shame. Still, it’s Happy Hour at Aesop’s, want to go and take advantage of some cut-price cocktails? They make great martinis.”

“Ok.” Belle was glad she’d gone home and got changed out of her uniform.

Aesop’s was a fairly new place; Belle had been there once with Ruby back when she’d been alive, and it was one of the – admittedly many – places that had received Ella’s seal of approval for serving excellent gin. Once they were settled with their drinks, Mulan gave Belle that secret little smile that showed she probably knew a lot more than she was letting on. It was the same smile she’d had when she’d surmised that Belle liked Alistair that first morning in the diner.

“So, what brings you out to this neck of the woods?” she asked. “Don’t you usually head over to the antique shop after you finish work?”

Belle could feel the heat beginning to rise in her cheeks. “Yes, well, I thought that I probably ought to stop hanging around there so much. Alistair – Gold,” she corrected quickly, knowing that all the other reapers referred to him as Gold and that knowing his first name was a privilege, “is probably going to get annoyed with me hanging around him all the time. It’s not my fault, the shop really is fascinating.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mulan said. “The Gold getting annoyed with you part, not the shop being fascinating part. The shop really is fascinating; he’s been collecting stock for it ever since he died.”

“I do like listening to him telling the stories behind all the things in there,” Belle said. She was thinking back to her last conversation with him, talking about the genuine twenties clothing all carefully packaged up in garment bags in the back of the shop.

“I think you just like listening to him, period,” Mulan said sagely.

“Yeah, well, that too.” Belle stirred her martini with the cocktail stick that the olives had been on, and avoided meeting Mulan’s gaze.

“So, what makes you think that he might be getting annoyed with you?”

“He can’t want someone young and silly like me hanging around asking him inane questions about his stock just for a chance to talk to him,” Belle said. “I mean, he’s been around for so long and he’s seen so much, and then there’s me. He’s got a hundred years of experience on me, why on earth would he want to hang out with someone who’s so young and uncultured in comparison? It must be like having to entertain an inquisitive little kid all the time.”

“I really don’t think that he feels that way,” Mulan said. “Sure, we all say that Gold’s the dad of the group, and he does look out for us in that way, but that doesn’t mean he feels like everyone’s a child in comparison to him. And I don’t think that his feelings towards you are paternal.”

Belle finally looked up at Mulan, raising an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“He told you his first name. Not even Jefferson, David and I knew that so quickly and even then we only found out because Ella was yelling at him. I don’t think he would have told you that if you were annoying and he wanted to get rid of you. No, if anything, I’d say that was a sign that things are moving in the right direction.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Mulan nodded and reached across the table, taking Belle’s hand.

“Were you always this insecure when it came to romantic relationships or is that something that’s just cropped up since you became a reaper?” she asked. It was a genuine question; there was no teasing in her voice. “You’re very bright and personable when it comes to everything else, but when it comes to Gold and your feelings towards him and his potential feelings towards you, you tend to just clam up.”

“I never really dated much before I died,” Belle admitted. “It was never really on my radar, I never really met anyone who set off that spark for me. And now that I have, I’m not entirely sure what to do with it.”

“I say go for it,” Mulan said firmly. “What have you got to lose?”

Belle laughed weakly. “How about my dignity? Then there’s also the fact that he’s my boss and if it all went pear-shaped then I would still have to see him every day to get my reaps for the next however many decades I’m going to be doing this work for.”

“But if you don’t take that chance, then you’re going to be pining for the next however many decades that you’re going to be doing  this work for,” Mulan pointed out. “And I think that biting the bullet and going for it will be easier in the long run as whatever happens, it will bring with it some form of closure. If it doesn’t work out, then you know that and you can eventually move on. If you never even try, then you won’t know, and this will drag on for a very long time.” She paused. “I really don’t want to see the two of you moping over each other across the table in the diner because neither of you are acting on your feelings. Ella, David and I would be sitting there watching you like a romantic movie and throwing popcorn at you, telling you to get on and kiss already.”

Belle gave another snort of laughter. “I can see you and Ella doing that. Not so much David, though.”

“Oh, he’d be right there with us, he’s a very romantic soul at heart – you just haven’t seen that side of him yet.” Mulan grinned. “So don’t make us pelt you with popcorn and do something about it. If he says no, he doesn’t feel that way, then so be it. You’re both adults and although you’ve been in the world for a lot less time, you know enough about the world to stay professional and not let it affect your reaping work. I’ll back you up.”

Belle finished her Martini. “All right,” she said, the cocktail buoying her confidence a little. “I’ll do it.” She didn’t give herself a time frame in which to do it; that would have been too much. But telling herself that she was going to do it was the first step, and having heard her make the declaration, she knew that Mulan was probably going to keep needling her until she actually gave in and did something. It was an unusual but effective motivation.

“So what about your own love life?” she asked, determined not to get drawn into any more conversation about her feelings for Alistair and the possibility of him returning them.

“Well, I’ve got a pen pal,” Mulan said. “We had a sort of reaper cultural exchange program a couple of years back, lots of reshuffling to help local teams to deal with large scale reaps. I was assigned to one of the bull runs in Spain that was going to get particularly messy, and I met this girl from the Highlands external influences division. It was a great week of Sangria and sunbathing. You’ll have to see if Gold will send you next time. Anyway, Merida and I still keep in touch and we’re trying to fix our reaping schedules so that we can meet up again.” Her smile became a little shy. “Maybe if it continues to work well one of us will transfer so that we can be in the same place. That’s what Jefferson did,” she added. “He met another reaper from England who was over here on a VIP reap, and he moved to London to be with her. He still pops back to say hi to us sometimes.”

Belle smiled. Although her situation was not the same as Mulan’s and Jefferson’s, it was encouraging to know that relationships between reapers were workable, even across oceans.

They stayed in the bar chatting for a long time, ordering in a second round of martinis before the place really started to pick up and get busy. Although Belle would have loved to have stayed on, enjoying Mulan’s company and really feeling like she was making a friend, she did have to get up early for work in the morning and whilst reapers may not suffer from hangovers, they were not immune to the effects of a general lack of sleep.

“I’ll walk you home,” Mulan said immediately when Belle got up to leave. She had done it when they had all hung out at the Rabbit Hole after Belle’s first reap, insisting that she, Belle and David all walk together as they were going in the same direction and Belle was grateful for the companionship. Although she had always thought Storybrooke to be a relatively safe town and she had walked home alone from nights out with Ruby without compunction whilst she had still been alive, being dead had changed her views somewhat. Even though she knew she couldn’t die again, she was still incredibly aware of what lurked out there in the twilight.

“What about you?” Belle asked as they were nearing her street.

“I’ll be ok, it’s just one more block and I teach self-defence classes at the gym.” She paused. “I’ll teach you, if you’d like. It would give me some peace of mind.”

Belle nodded. “That would be great, thank you.”

“Just let me know what time works for you. It’s always good to get some kind of a hobby when you start reaping, it helps to fill the days, you know. And it would keep you out of Gold’s shop.” She winked, but before Belle could make any kind of retort to the teasing, Mulan’s expression changed, her brow furrowing and her face slowly morphing into a mask of anger.

“No, no, no, you don’t.”

She was looking somewhere over Belle’s shoulder, and Belle twisted to see what had so enraged her friend. On the other side of the road, she could vaguely see movement in one of the alleys between buildings were the dumpsters were kept, and before she knew it, Mulan was running over the road, dodging cars and late night cyclists.

“Mulan?” Belle didn’t particularly want to stand on the pavement like a lemon when Mulan was throwing herself headlong into the unknown, so she raced after her friend. “Mulan, what are you doing?”

Once she reached the alley, it became abundantly clear what Mulan was doing. A young woman was struggling against a much stronger man, and Mulan had entered the fray, attacking the assailant with a ferocity that Belle had never seen, much less thought the usual calm and unshakeable Mulan capable of. The man lost his grip on his victim and she stumbled out of the alley, straight into Belle, whereupon she crumpled into a flood of terrified tears. Belle held her close, trying to keep her calm and move her away from the alley but at the same time trying to keep an eye on Mulan and make sure that her friend wasn’t going to get hurt.

She knew that it was ridiculous; that Mulan couldn’t get hurt because she was a reaper; if anyone was going to come out on top of this scenario then it was going to be the woman with a judo black-belt and an advanced healing factor who was literally unable to die. Within a minute, she had the guy flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him completely.

“Mulan!” Belle yelled. “Mulan, leave him, we need to call the cops!”

“Then call them!” Mulan yelled back. “And don’t let her watch!”

The young victim was peering back over her shoulder with wide eyes as Mulan continued to pummel the attacker, and Belle gently turned her face away as she dialled 911.

It was at that moment that Belle realised why Mulan was so anxious that the victim shouldn’t watch what was going on in the alley.

With a fierce look of concentration on her face, Mulan plunged her hands into the man’s chest, and Belle watched in horror as she physically lifted his soul out by the front of his spectral shirt, his body going limp and zombie-like on the ground.

The soul was looking at Mulan in mute terror.

“You’d better be scared, mister,” Mulan growled. “You touch any woman like that again, and you can bet there’ll be a post-it, and I’m sure as hell going to be the one to collect. You try that again, and I won’t put you back in.”

She shoved the soul back into the body, which gave a heave of breath and spluttered, flailing on the floor where Mulan had knocked the stuffing out of him.

Mulan came out to join Belle and the young lady just as a cruiser pulled up and the cops arrived to handle the situation. The sheer rage had gone from Mulan’s face and she just looked sad and drained.

“Please don’t tell Gold I did that,” she muttered as they left the scene. “It’s one of the cardinal rules of reaping; you don’t pull a soul out if there’s no post-it. I was just so angry, I completely lost it. I mean, I would still have beaten him to a pulp anyway, but I shouldn’t have pulled his soul.”

Belle nodded. “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said. They reached her front door and Belle stepped inside. “Do you want to come in for a cup of tea? You look like you could use one. And I’m here if you want to talk.”

Mulan gave her a grateful smile. “That would be wonderful, thank you.”

They entered the apartment just as Dorothy was leaving for work, and brief introductions were made, but then Mulan and Belle had the place to themselves. It was only once they were sitting on the sofa with mugs of tea warming their hands that Mulan spoke again.

“I just lose it in situations like that,” she said. “I go in like an avenger because I know I can’t die again.”

Belle sensed that she was about to be told something very important, and remained silent, waiting for Mulan to talk in her own time.

“That’s how I died the first time,” Mulan continued, staring into the depths of the tea. “The circumstances were different, but I saw someone in that position, and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I had to help. I just didn’t realise that the guy had a knife.” She paused. “I didn’t feel a thing. The next thing I knew, I was back on the other side of the road watching a police car pull up, and Gold and Jefferson were telling me not to watch.”

The thought of it made Belle’s stomach turn in knots. She knew that external influences covered murder as well, but she had never fathomed that one of her fellow reapers could have been murdered.

“That’s awful,” she murmured.

Mulan shrugged. “It is what it is. But even though I know how it ended the first time, I still can’t stand by and do nothing. In fact, I’m even more likely to do something now. I paid the ultimate price the first time, so I’ve got no reason not to intervene.”

Belle didn’t know what to say. She felt that she was now party to very privileged information. The story of her death was something that Mulan had chosen to share, and the moment deserved the proper respect.

“It’s like Gold says. The only death you can never truly get over is your own.”

They continued to sit in silence for a while, but it was not an uncomfortable one. The outpouring of truth had left the air calm and clear, and Mulan seemed calm again.

“Thank you for telling me,” Belle said.

Mulan smiled. “I trust you. With my secrets and with my story.”

Belle nodded. She trusted Mulan as well, and she felt that she had definitely made a firm friend in her new life.


	8. Chapter 8

The animal shelter was short-staffed at the moment, so it wasn’t unusual for David to come to the daily post-it handover later or earlier than everyone else. Today, Gold was quite grateful for the delay as it meant everyone else, including Belle, had already gone, and Gold was alone in their booth for the rather delicate chain of inquiry that he was about to undertake.

As much as he loved Ella as a dear friend, this was probably something that would be best followed up with someone who was somewhat younger than both himself and Ella and therefore a lot more with the times. David was really the best person available to understand his predicament.

“Hi Gold, sorry I’m late. I can never seem to make the shifts work out right these days, especially trying to get reaps in around them.”

Gold waved David’s apologies away as the younger man slid into the booth opposite him. “It’s quite all right, David. My shop will wait for me. Your life can’t wait for you. Well, sort-of life.”

David snorted. “Yeah, it doesn’t sound quite as impressive when you put it like that.” He grabbed the post-it that Gold held out to him and checked his watch, relieved when he saw that there was plenty of time before he would have to go out and find his reap. Granny brought over coffee and Gold took a refill as David got his breath back.

“I’m actually quite glad to get you alone, David,” Gold began, really wishing that he knew exactly where he was going with the conversation and what all David’s answers would be before he said them, but then that sort of undermined the need for having a conversation in the first place.

David raised an eyebrow. “Am I in trouble?”

“What? No, of course not. Don’t trust anything that Ella tells you about getting in trouble.” Although he had been dead for four years and had been on Gold’s team for two years, David was still considered the sweet young newbie by the rest of the crew; or at least he had been up until Belle’s arrival. He was probably quite glad that a new recruit had joined in order to get the yoke of ‘youngest and most inexperienced’ off his shoulders once and for all. Ella in particular had taken great delight in teasing him when he had first transferred over to Storybrooke, in a way that she couldn’t really keep up with Belle.

“No,” Gold continued. “No, I just wanted to… ask your advice.”

Asking for help was not something that Gold had done lightly. Considering the start that he had got in life and how his own life had ended, he had spent the vast majority of his death viewing asking for help as a kind of weakness that he was determined not to fall prey to anymore. Accepting that he needed advice was a huge step, and actually asking for it was an even bigger one.

David grinned. “Are you finally going to ask Belle out and you’re looking for tips on modern courtship methods?”

Gold looked up, completely agape. That was exactly what he had been about to ask, but how had David managed to figure it out?

“What? Yes! No! Possibly! How did you...?”

David shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious that you like her, Gold, and that the feelings are reciprocated. We’re all surprised that you haven’t made a move sooner if I’m being honest with you. You spend a lot of time alone together in that shop. Had it honestly never occurred to you to just follow that up with asking her out to dinner? Or maybe just going for coffee if you’re not ready to commit to an entire meal with each other yet. Although considering the amount of time we all spend here eating together, maybe that’s not the best idea.”

Gold felt his shoulders sag. “I feel like everyone around the table has just as much of a stake in my romantic life as I do.”

“Of course.” David reached across and slapped Gold’s shoulder. “You’re our boss. We need you to be bright and chipper and full of the joys of spring or you can make our lives hell, and it’s a hell we’ll have to deal with for a long time.”

“I honestly don’t know where my reputation for being a vindictive head reaper has come from,” Gold muttered. “I’m going to have to have words with Ella. I can’t be doing with her spreading rumours about me to new recruits.”

“Well, I think that if she has been spreading rumours, they haven’t reached Belle yet. She certainly enjoys spending time with you, so I don’t think that she’d be averse to spending more time with you in a date scenario.”

Gold sighed. “I think I’m a bit too old to be going on dates.”

“Gold, please, you’re way too old to be doing anything. You’re over a hundred; by the law of averages you should be on a Zimmer frame having your waffles fed to you through a straw, so I think you’re doing very well. Come on. You like Belle and she obviously likes you even if you’re the only one around the table who can’t see it. I don’t think you’ve got anything to lose.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

“I don’t know how dating works.”

David spread his hands. “That’s why you wanted to speak to me, wasn’t it?”

Gold nodded. “Just so you know, I’m already feeling completely out of my depth here and I’m trying not to make it any more awkward than it already is.”

“This isn’t awkward,” David said. “I’m always happy to help a friend find love. You’ve waited long enough for it, I can tell you that and I’ve only known you for two years.”

“Thank you, David.” Gold drained his coffee and decided against getting another one for fear of being completely buzzed on caffeine when he did meet Belle in the shop later. Although he wouldn’t suffer the terrible crash later, he could still feel the effects whilst they were working, like with alcohol. “So… What do you advise?”

“Be honest with her,” David said simply. “Don’t try and be someone that you’re not. You two spend a lot of time together so she’s getting to know you as a person. Don’t try and pretend that you’re not the man in the antique shop. That’s the man she’s getting to know and to be attracted to. If you take her out and suddenly put on a different face, not only is she not going to buy it, but she’s going to think that there’s something seriously wrong with you.”

“But the person I am in the shop is…”

“Is…” David prompted.

“Boring,” Gold finished lamely.

David sighed and rolled his eyes. “Gold, do you seriously think that Belle would spend so much time in your shop if she found you boring.”

“Well, the shop’s not boring; it’s got lots of very interesting things to talk about in it. When you take me out of the shop, then it’s just me.”

“Gold, you’re not boring and when you’re a reaper age goes by the wayside, so you’re not old either. Belle is not going to suddenly stop finding you attractive or interesting if you take her out on a date.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I am right, there’s no supposing about it.”

Gold laughed at the vehemence in David’s tone. “You’ve been taking lessons in assertiveness from Ella.”

“You know what they say: you have to learn from the best.”

Gold pondered David’s advice for a while. Just to be himself. That was all very well and good, but there were some points where Gold didn’t really know who he was himself. He had been around for so long and had gone through so many fake identities that it was easy to lose sight of the Alistair Gold that he had been all those years before, back when he had still been alive.

It was when he was with Belle that he felt the most like himself, to the extent where he had given her his first name and she regularly called him by it. His real first name wasn’t something that he gave out to anyone with any degree of regularity, and yet he had given it to Belle having only known her for about a week.

Some might say that was a sign of trust, and Gold knew that it was, but the fact that he had been able to give that trust so freely and openly worried him. He had been hurt before by people whom he had placed so much trust in, and like anyone who had been hurt, he was scared of it happening again. Ella had commented in the past that he never liked to get too close to people even though it was obvious that he cared deeply about them.

“Gold, I honestly think that you might have a chance at real, lasting happiness here,” David said. “Believe me. I know what it’s like to have that and to see it slip through your fingers. Grab it with both hands whilst you can, don’t let go of it. If it turns out not to be, then it’s not to be, but don’t let the opportunity pass you by. I can speak from experience here; you don’t want to do that.”

Gold sat back and looked at the man in front of him.

“You’re such an inherently good person, David, that after everything you’ve been through, you still want the best for everyone else. I don’t think that I could ever be that strong.”

David shrugged and looked out of the window, not really meeting Gold’s eye as he spoke again.

“I’m past being bitter about it all,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be unhappy and it’s not something that I would wish on anybody. I’m not one of these people who say that if they can’t be happy then no-one can be happy. There’s not a lot of use in that and it wouldn’t make me feel any better. Negativity’s like a leech. It’s draining, and it multiplies, and it doesn’t get anywhere. Everyone deserves to find their own happiness and I like to think that I’ll find mine again one day. In the meantime, I’ll just help everyone else on their way.”

Gold would never fail to be amazed at David’s selflessness and willingness to help, especially after the circumstances that had led him to Storybrooke in the first place.

“Have you been in contact with any of the California teams recently?” Gold asked.

David shook his head. “No. I find it easier not to know what’s happening down there. I’d rather not know, so that I can pretend that everything’s all right and that nothing bad ever goes on. I’d rather believe that they were happy than know that they’ve got other issues going on and be unable to help.” He paused. “Emma turns sixteen in two months.”

Gold gave David a sad smile.

“You can’t go back,” he said. “You don’t want to get in trouble with the powers that be again. They’ll only reassign you again, and probably put you somewhere even further away.”

“I know. It’s just difficult. I mean, we all leave people behind when we die, but any parent just wants to watch their kids grow up.”

Gold nodded. “I know exactly how you feel.”

Despite the vast differences in their ages and the circumstances of their deaths, Gold had found a kindred spirit in David from the moment that the powers that be had sent word that he would be transferring from California to Storybrooke to prevent what they called ‘meddling’ and what Gold called ‘desperate self-preservation’.

Both Gold and David were fathers who had been separated from their children long before their time and would never get to see them grow up and start families of their own. The impulse to hang around and try to be a part of their lives after death was a strong one; one that David had failed to resist on more than one occasion. He had been lucky enough not to have been caught by the living authorities whilst hanging around his daughter’s school, but the reaping superiors out wherever they were had decided that it was too risky, and that physical separation was the only way to make sure that David did not get himself into trouble.

Gold knew how much David missed his family and could sympathise completely.

“I want to do something for her,” David said. “I know I can’t go and see her, but I want to send her something to let her know that I’m still thinking of her and I still love her. Some kind of sign to let her know that although I’ve gone, it’s not forever. People talk about receiving signs from beyond the grave from their loved ones all the time, and it’s only since I’ve become a reaper that I’ve realised that it was probably reapers trying to communicate with their families.”

Gold nodded. “I think that could probably be arranged and the powers that be would be none the wiser.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Gold, you’re the one who’s always reiterating the importance of not having any contact with your old life.”

“I know, but people rarely listen to me, and this isn’t the same as hanging around outside your old house like a creeper. There’s a difference between trying to get your old life back as if nothing’s changed and accepting that things have changed and working with it. That’s the problem that Belle had when she first joined us. She was trying to live her old life.” Gold’s voice was sage and knowing. “So were you.”

“I guess you’re right.” David paused and held his cup out for a refill as Granny came past again; Gold declined. “I found a great card the other day. It had ducklings on it. I always used to call her duckling. I was thinking about getting it and sending it to her. Not signed, just empty. But she’d know it was from me, because of the ducklings.”

Gold nodded. “I would say that’s harmless enough. Contrary to popular belief I’m not a grumpy curmudgeon wishing to suck the joy out of everyone’s afterlife all the time.”

David just laughed. “Gold, I have never thought that you want to suck the joy out of everyone’s afterlife all the time. Maybe fifty per cent of the time.”

“Only fifty per cent?” Gold shook his head, tutting. “I must try harder. I have a reputation to maintain here.”

“That reputation has long since been ruined. We all know that you’re a softie on the inside.” David tucked his post-it into his jeans pocket. “I’m going to stay here a while and get some breakfast. You’ll want to get on, Belle will be finishing her post round soon and three to one says she comes over to the shop.”

“Yes.” Gold wasn’t sure that this was a good thing or not. Whilst his conversation with David had helped him somewhat, he still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure that what he was doing was a good idea in the long run. Some experiences cast long shadows and Gold’s marriage was one of them. On his one hundredth wedding anniversary he was reaping a particularly nasty car accident and he realised with grim irony just how much the wreck reflected his life with Milah.

At least everyone in the car wreck had got to move on to a bright new afterlife together with their loved ones. Gold was stuck remembering everything that had gone wrong between him and Milah for what felt like the rest of time.

Naturally, he was somewhat sceptical of his success with Belle, being as she was from a completely different time period.

“Just be yourself,” David said as Gold slid out of the booth and made to leave the diner. “That’s what she wants.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure, now just get going and ask her out before the rest of us resort to middle school tactics and ask her out on your behalf.”

It couldn’t be spun out any longer, and Gold left David to his breakfast, going back in the direction of the pawn shop. It was a rare sunny day in Storybrooke, although still bitterly cold with the early spring weather. His reap wasn’t until the afternoon, so there would be plenty of time to overthink asking Belle out and make a complete mess of it before then.  

Despite David’s words it was still too early for Belle to be arriving at the shop, and Gold was left alone with his thoughts as he opened up and began to wait for custom. The shop wasn’t the most lucrative of businesses and if Gold hadn’t had independent means from several lucrative investments that Ella had helped him set up back in the fifties, then he would probably have had to close down, but it provided a good front for reaping and the necessary forgery that went with the afterlife, and it helped him to keep abreast of what was happening in the world of the living. He wouldn’t call it eavesdropping per se, but he did hear a lot of interesting things when people were in the shop and had forgotten that he was there, standing quietly behind the counter, observing life as he did.

On darker days, he wondered how many of them he would reap before his time on the earth was done and how many of them would realise that it was him.

The bell above the shop door rang and Gold looked up from the candelabra that he was polishing to see Henry Mills coming in. Gold smiled; he liked Henry. The boy had been coming into the shop ever since he was old enough to be running around unsupervised, and he had just as much fascination for all of the antiques as Belle did, wanting to know all of the stories behind them. The difference was that Gold told Belle exactly how he had acquired the items personally throughout the years, whereas to Henry, the tales were always attributed to distant relatives.

“Hi Mr Gold,” Henry said brightly. “Have you got anything new in today?”

“Not since you were last here, I’m afraid. Shouldn’t you be in school, Henry?”

“It’s closed; apparently there was a sewage leak in the playground.” Henry wrinkled his nose. “Anyway, Mom’s working so I thought I’d come and hang out here for a while. If that’s ok with you, of course,” he added hastily.

“You’re always welcome here, Henry. You can help me with the dusting.”

Henry accepted the cleaning cloth with good grace and began work on the picture frames on one wall.

“So, are you seeing that pretty post lady again?” he asked, completely out of the blue, and Gold did a double take.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The post lady! I’ve seen her coming out just as I’m coming in, we say hi on the street outside. I know that she can’t just be delivering the mail because mail gets delivered in the morning and she’s sometimes here in an afternoon. And also I can’t believe that you get that much mail delivered here and not to your house.”

Gold sighed, leaning back heavily against the counter. If even Henry had noticed the frequency of Belle’s visits, then something was probably going to have to be done.

“I think she likes you,” Henry continued. “She’s always smiling whenever I see her so I reckon she must enjoy spending time with you.”

Gold nodded carefully. “That’s a reasonable assumption to make based on the evidence,” he said. “I enjoy spending time with her, too.”

“So, are you dating?”

“Henry, I think you’re taking far too much interest in this.”

“Well, you know. Mom always says that she thinks you must be kind of lonely, out here with only your antiques for company. It would be good if you had someone special. When I told her about the post lady she practically cheered.”

Gold took that statement with a pinch of salt. Whilst he and Regina Mills were cordial acquaintances as a result of Henry’s frequent visits to the shop, he really didn’t think that she could be that invested in his happiness. The extent of their interaction was limited to trusting that Gold had no ill intentions towards Henry and could be employed as a makeshift babysitter.

“I highly doubt that, Henry.”

“Ok, so she didn’t cheer, but she was definitely interested.”

Gold just narrowed his eyes. “Those picture frames won’t dust themselves, you know,” he muttered. “Once you’ve finished on them, you can start on the teapots over in that display cabinet.”

They worked in silence for a while, although Henry’s smile told Gold that the thought was still on his mind, but soon Gold was absorbed in his restoration work and he was startled when Belle walked in.

“Hi Alistair… Oh, hello.”

“Lacey, this is Henry, the mayor’s son and a friend of mine. Henry, this is Lacey.”

“Pleased to meet you, Henry.”

As Henry and Belle shook hands, Henry looked at Belle through narrowed eyes, as if he was trying to place her. There was the flicker of recognition, but if he was going to say something, then he thought better of it. Gold let out the breath that he didn’t know that he had been holding. It wasn’t the first time that he had thought there was something about Henry’s perception when it came to reapers, and Belle would be the first he had met whom he might possibly recognise from her previous life.

“Well, I should probably go,” Henry said, and the fact that he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat made it obvious that he was leaving them alone together. “I’ll see you around, Mr Gold.”

Belle watched him go and smiled. “He seems like a good kid.”

“He is. Too clever for his own good, I think. Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please. It’s freezing out there, not at all the weather for delivering post on a bike.”

Gold stepped back to allow her into the back of the shop, and once the tea was made, Belle accepted the mug gratefully. They drank in silence for a little while, but the expectation of something being said was screaming in the air between them.

“Belle, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Gold began, at the same time as Belle said “Alistair, can I ask you something.”

“You go on,” she said.

“Would you like to maybe go out some time?” Gold asked. God, he sounded terrible, this was definitely not the smooth process he’d hoped it would be. “For lunch, or dinner, or… something.”

To his immense surprise and immensurate relief, Belle just broke into a luminous smile.

“I was going to ask you exactly the same thing,” she said. “I would love to.”

“You would?”

“I really would.” Belle was beaming with excitement. “How about that new Thai place that’s opened up around the corner from Marco’s?”

“That sounds great.”

“Tonight?”

“Even better.”

Gold knew how much he must be grinning like a lunatic, but he didn’t care. In the end, taking a chance had paid off. He had a date with Belle.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the month's hiatus, folks!

**Nine**

“It’s just a date, I’m sure there’s no reason to be so nervous.” Dorothy took another spoonful of oatmeal and looked at Belle sagely. “And unlike me, you actually know the person that you’re going out with.”

Belle stopped her frantic pacing up and down the apartment and sank onto the sofa. There was still half an hour before she was due to meet Gold, but she’d been ready to go for the past hour, unaccountably nervous and thinking up all the worst case scenarios that might prevent her from getting to the date on time and therefore giving Gold the wrong impression about her feelings towards him.

“How is the online dating going?” she asked her roommate, eager to avoid talking about her own love life.

“All right,” Dorothy replied. “I had some luck with the last one; I’m going to see her again.”

“That’s great! I’m glad that it seems to be working out for you now.”

“Yes. Maybe my fortunes are finally changing. Anyway, I’d better get going. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise. And if it is all a disaster, then you can just chalk it up to experience.”

“Yeah.” Belle wasn’t so convinced. “The problem is that I still have to work with him every day.”

“Well…” Dorothy tailed off as she got tangled up trying to get her scrub top on, getting her head stuck in one armhole. “I’ll help you think up some really great ways of pranking him if it comes to that,” she finished, muffled by fabric.

Belle laughed. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.” She knew deep down that there was no reason to be nervous and that she and Gold were both on the same page. She also knew that it was likely he was even more nervous than her, because even though it had been a long time since she had last been on a date, it was probably even longer for Gold.

Dorothy left the apartment and Belle flopped backwards onto the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. She had a date. She still couldn’t really believe it. A few weeks ago, she had thought that her life was over in all senses of the word, and that there was nothing to be enjoyed in the afterlife. She’d never thought it possible that she could be starting a new relationship with someone she’d never known when she was alive, even if she had met him briefly in passing. It was an opportunity that hadn’t been open to her, but now it was, and if there was one thing that Belle’s afterlife had taught her so far, it was that life was far too short not to grab every possible opportunity with both hands.

That didn’t stop her worrying that she was going to make an utter fool of herself, though.

She glanced at her watch again and even though she was still far too early, she decided that she might as well leave. There was nothing to be gained from sitting around stewing in the apartment, and she hoped that the cool evening air would clear her head and make her calmer before she met up with Gold. There would be less chance of being an embarrassment if she was thinking clearly.

Belle wandered slowly through the town. She had to go past Gold’s shop in order to reach the restaurant, and she peered in through the darkened windows out of habit rather than anything else. Naturally there was no sign of movement inside, but it did make Belle wonder. Gold spent so much time in his shop and kept long opening hours, and she’d almost been convinced that he lived in the back there. There was a couch with blankets on it, after all, she’d seen it often enough when she’d been hanging around after work.

She hastily pulled her mind away from the various less than innocent things that could be done on that couch and walked on towards the restaurant quickly.

She had only been standing outside the place for a few moments when she saw Gold come around the corner, and she smiled. They were both early for their date, and she saw the nervous little smile that Gold gave when he saw that she was already there.

“Have you been waiting long?” he asked as he came over to her.

“No, not really. It’s not like you’re late, in any case.”

“No. We’re both unfashionably early, I think.” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “It’s been a while since I was last doing this; the etiquette of modern dating is somewhat lost on me. David tried to give me a crash course before I came out tonight but I think he’s got his work cut out.”

Belle laughed. “I’m sure that you’ll be fine. Come on, we can just have a drink at the bar if our table isn’t ready yet.”

They entered the restaurant; they were too early for their table but the cocktails at the bar were reasonable. Belle stirred her drink with her straw, wondering how on earth she should start the conversation. When they were in the shop together, they could talk for hours on end about anything and everything, but now, here, out in public on a date and trapped by the social conventions of such a thing, she had no idea where she was supposed to begin. She wasn’t a novice when it came to dating, but at the same time, it wasn’t something that she had a lot of experience in and this awkward silence on the first date was something that she remembered from life very clearly.

“You’re looking very lovely tonight,” Gold said.

Belle glanced down at her dress, high-necked in pale blue lace. It was new, one of the first items that she had bought to go with her new life. It felt right that she was wearing something new whilst she was out on this first date; she had made the decision that this was going to be a new part of her existence, something that was unconnected with her old life and something that she could enjoy to the full without any memories clouding it. Mulan had helped her to pick it out; the day after their cocktail outing at Aesop’s that had ended on such a sour note, her friend had dragged her out to buy an outfit for the date that she had sensed was coming even before the invitation had been made.

She smiled. “Thank you. You’re looking very handsome yourself.”

He was wearing his usual three piece suit, but instead of the all black ensemble that he usually wore day-to-day as a matter of course, there was colour in there, his shirt a rich purple and his tie a swirling pattern of indigo and violet.

“Thank you. Ella’s always telling me that I look far too funereal so I thought that since this was going to be a happy occasion, I shouldn’t overdo the black.”

“The black does suit you, but you can definitely carry off colour,” Belle said. “I like it. You should wear different colours more often. I have sometimes wondered what your reaps think when they first meet you, all dressed in black. I know that one or two of mine might have had to double take if they’d seen you there instead of a post-lady.”

“Yes. That’s Ella’s argument. You’ve seen the way that she dresses so I wasn’t entirely convinced at first.”

Belle was fairly sure that Gold could wear a hessian sack and still look good. There was an air of suavity about him that seemed to lend itself to whatever he was wearing. Or wasn’t wearing. She had the sudden urge to see him in more casual clothing and wondered what he’d look like in jeans. Or not in jeans. Or not in anything.

She coughed as a sip of her drink went down the wrong way with that sudden inappropriate thought, and matters weren’t helped when Gold handed her his pocket square to wipe her mouth with.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “What’s in that drink?”

“I’m fine,” Belle croaked. “Honestly.”

Thankfully the waiter came over to tell them that their table was ready, and she was spared any further questioning as to what had caused her sudden predicament. The conversation became taken up with food and ordering, and it continued in that vein.

“You must have been to lots of places in your time,” Belle said as they were waiting for their entrees to arrive. “I think I’d like to travel, if I can. We have so much time. We might as well use it. If we can help a few souls to their final destination along the way, then so be it.”

Gold gave a soft laugh. “I like that image of you,” he said. “An angel of salvation, going around the world to help people on their way to wherever they’re going.”

“It’s not like we don’t have the opportunity. Might be a bit of a logistical challenge if we wanted to keep reaping regularly, but I think that it could be done.”

“There’s probably someone out there who’s done it,” Gold agreed. “It’s such a big world and I don’t claim to know every reaper in it by a long way.” He paused. “As to your original remark though, I haven’t done that much travelling myself. I came over here from the UK and travelled around here a little before settling down in Storybrooke, but that’s about it. I’ve always been attached to home, not really one for travelling and seeing the world, although there’s so much of it that I want to see. I suppose that in a way, I’ve always been scared of what’s out there.”

Belle reached across the table and rested her hand lightly on top of his. He didn’t pull away, and she chanced to take his hand properly, slipping her fingers through his.

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right person to travel with,” she said. “I have so much that I want to see, but I don’t think that I would want to see all of it alone.”

He smiled. “Maybe you’re right. For all that we have a lot of time, I don’t spend a lot of it thinking about the future and making plans. This world that we live in reminds us so often that the future is a fickle thing. Perhaps living in the now is the way to go.”

“If you can apply that philosophy to life, I don’t see why it can’t also be applied to afterlife.”

Their food arrived then and they fell into a companionable silence as they ate, delicious khao pad with fragrant lemongrass, and coconut prawns.

It wasn’t the first time that Belle had felt happiness since her death, but it was the first time that she had felt this kind of happiness. Not just happiness but a sense of anticipation. Everything about her situation was an unknown to her and she was learning so much as she went along, but this unknown and the shrouded future in front of her that was her relationship with Gold, well, that was one part of the afterlife that she couldn’t wait to get started on.

This was true enjoyment, something that she had thought was going to be extremely hard to find in the midst of the existence that she had found herself in, surrounded always by so much death and grief and loss. It really hit home just how important the friendships and relationships that the reapers built for themselves were to keep them from going completely mad.

This might only be their first official date, but this relationship had been building up for so long, and for Belle it was one that she was determined was going to go the distance. They had spent such a long time laying the groundwork for it that she knew they had what it took. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t have all the time in the world to iron out the kinks and really make it work.

At length their evening together drew to natural close. The meal was finished and their glasses were empty, and it was time to part before it became too much of a good thing. Gold took care of the check and helped Belle into her coat, and Belle had to smile. The term _gentleman_ wasn’t used so much these days, but it definitely applied to Gold, who had come from an era when it wasn’t so uncommon. His gallantry was one of the little quirks about him that she loved, but she wasn’t above dragging him into the twenty-first century when it came to some other aspects of dating.

Outside the restaurant, waiting for a cab to take her home, Belle caught Gold’s hand in hers and stepped in closer to him, licking her lips in an unconscious intimation of what she wanted very much to do.

“Belle?”

“I’d like to kiss you, Alistair,” she said. There couldn’t be any misunderstandings. She really didn’t want him to get the wrong end of the stick when it came to her intentions. “Very much.”

He smiled. “I would like that too.”

She tilted her head up towards him, pressing her lips against his, and she was pleased to find him eager and pliant, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head as he returned the kiss with enthusiasm. Maybe he’d moved with the times more than she thought he had; she certainly wasn’t averse to that.

The taxi arrived, and she pecked another little butterfly kiss to his cheek before getting into it, smiling all the way back home. It had been a brilliant date. All they had to do was keep going like that.

X

Belle was in the kitchen making her first cup of tea of the day when Dorothy came in from the hospital. She dumped her bag and coat on a chair with a huge yawn that turned into a groan, but as soon as she saw Belle, her tired expression brightened and she broke into a grin.

“So, how was it?” she asked, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Do I get to meet him this morning, or what?”

“Dorothy!” Belle shook her head in despair. “No, you don’t get to meet him this morning, and at this rate you won’t ever get to meet him.”

“Hey, it’s ok. I’ve done it on the first date before. I’m not judging.”

“Nothing happened. We had dinner and we went our separate ways afterwards and that was it.”

“Are you sure that was it?” Dorothy grabbed the kettle and poured herself a cup of hot water, rifling around through the kitchen cupboards for the chamomile blend until Belle found it and handed it to her.

“Well, we did kiss,” Belle conceded.

“What kind of kiss?”

“Just a normal kind of kiss.” She remembered the feeling of Gold’s lips against hers, and she smiled.

“I know that smile,” Dorothy said. “That secretive little smile. I think it went well, and I think that there’ll be a lot more than kissing on the horizon.”

“Dorothy! Aren’t you supposed to be too tired to be making these kinds of jokes?”

“I’m going to bed now,” Dorothy said. “But come on, you’ve got to let me have some fun whilst I can. I’ve missed having a roommate, and not just because I need help with the rent. There’s something about having someone to chat to. Still, whatever happens, I’m glad that it went well. I told you that there was no need to be nervous.”

“Yes, I guess you did.”

Dorothy just gave her a knowing look and left the kitchen with her tea in the direction of her well-earned bed, and Belle sat down at the table, thinking about the evening that she had shared with Gold, and about what Dorothy had said.

It was true that they weren’t supposed to become too attached to the living, because next to reapers, their lives were fleeting and so full of momentum and movement where the dead always stood still. There was always the worry that Dorothy would find out that her roommate was not as she seemed, and Belle didn’t know how she was going to cross that bridge when she came to it.

At the same time though, she couldn’t help wanting to keep Dorothy as a friend. It was all very well having friends among her fellow reapers, and she did definitely class Mulan as a friend, but she wanted to keep some connection to the living, as much as she could. If she was going to pass for a living person, and live in a vibrant and very much alive world, then surely it made sense to have someone living in it, a friend who could serve as that unknowing go-between.

For all her living arrangements now were supposed to be temporary, she knew that she was definitely going to miss Dorothy’s easy friendship when the time came for her to move out. She just supposed that she was going to have to be very careful not to give the game away.

Soon enough, it was time for her to leave for work, and she pushed her thoughts and reminiscences to the back of her mind. There were no post-its to worry about just yet, and the morning was hers to enjoy as she went about her rounds.

She soon found her thoughts wending back in the direction of Gold and wondering what he was doing as she was cycling around the town dispensing mail to all and sundry. A part of her that she had long through dead and buried, literally, was wondering at the possibility of waking up with him one day and seeing his morning routines for herself. Was he a coffee or a tea person? He drank coffee in the diner, but they frequently took tea together in the afternoons in the back of the shop. Was his house just as beautiful as his shop was?

She swerved to avoid a cat that was happily sitting in the middle of the street washing itself, and shook herself out of her imaginings, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. Although she thought that the date had gone well, even if she did say so herself, she was still nervous at the thought of meeting Gold in the diner later for the post-it handout. Would the rest of the group notice anything was different between them? She felt like she had a luminescent sign over her head saying that they’d kissed, and that they’d finally crossed that boundary from friends to more-than-friends that they had been skirting around for so long now.

Belle sighed, chaining her bike up to a lamp post and going around the neighbourhood on foot with her bag. She was overthinking it all, and she knew that if Mulan were there, she’d have no qualms in telling her so.

All the same, she felt that it was a pretty momentous occasion nonetheless.

X

Across town in the diner, Gold was feeling a similar worry. Granny kept giving him funny looks, as if she could tell that something was different about him, and he just wanted nothing more than to sink down under the table and stay there until someone else from their group turned up. Someone who was preferably not Ella.

“Hello darling.”

Well, that was one pipe dream dashed before it had chance to materialise. Ella flung herself down into the booth opposite him, spreading out her various belongings over the seat beside her and leaning in close with an expression that was positively hungry.

“So, I want to know all the gossip.”

“Ella, you have known me long enough to know that a gentleman will never kiss and tell.”

“So, there was kissing involved, then?”

“Ella, please!”

“Gold, I have known you long enough to know that I’m never going to get anything out of you if I don’t tease you into frustration.”

“Maybe the reason for that is that I don’t want to tell you.”

“All right, all right, I’ll leave it alone.”

Gold knew that she wouldn’t. She had far too much vested interest in where his relationship with Belle was going. She seemed to have appointed herself the guardian of their fledgling romance. Whilst David would be there with the practical advice and dating tips, Ella would be there to embarrass him into doing something even more embarrassing. The worst thing was that he knew that if everything did start to fall down around his ears, Ella would certainly be the first person to know about it and the first person that he would turn to for assistance, and he knew deep down that however much she might make fun of him in her light-hearted way, she always had his back, no matter what.

“We did kiss,” he conceded. “But it went no further than that. I don’t want to rush into anything. I already feel like I’m rushing into something.”

“Gold, everything to you feels like it’s going too quickly. That’s a side effect of being so long-lived. It’s skewed your sense of time perception.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “You’re almost as old as I am, you know.”

“I know, but I was alive and kicking throughout the roaring twenties, when life was moving at a pace that you already couldn’t keep up with. Nothing feels like rushing to me, darling. This little flirtation of yours with Belle has been moving at such a snail’s pace that I’ve been tempted to intervene on more than one occasion.”

“Ella, I will personally have you transferred to Siberia if you meddle in this… whatever it is with Belle.”

“It’s a relationship, darling; it’s not a whatever-it-is. She’s attracted to you, you’re attracted to her, and you are both acting on that mutual attraction. That definitely makes it a relationship. You’re dating. Congratulations and welcome to the modern world. I knew you’d get here eventually.” She paused. “Was that your first kiss in one hundred years?”

“No, of course not,” Gold lied. He could tell that Ella didn’t believe him, but since Mulan had just arrived and he could see Belle parking her bike outside the diner, he said no more on the subject and thankfully Ella let it drop too.

Belle smiled at him as she entered the diner, sitting down in the booth beside him. Gold remembered the feeling of her mouth on his outside the restaurant last night, and the taste of coconut on her lips.

He might be rushing into something, but he had never been happier to do so.


	10. Chapter 10

There was a definite spring in Belle’s step as she made her way towards Gold’s shop that afternoon, having gone home to change and leave her bicycle. The days were getting warmer and stickier, and after a morning spent cycling several miles, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her day red-faced and sweaty.

She was dating. She and Gold had begun their fledgling relationship a week ago and things were going very smoothly. Neither of them really had a clue what they were doing, and they were still at their most comfortable when they were hanging around in the back of the shop together. It was the same easy friendship that they had shared before they had decided to act on their mutual attraction, but now there were the occasional kisses to remind them that their feelings no longer needed to be hidden out of fear of what the other person might think.

Her post-it wasn’t due until later in the afternoon, so she thought that she might as well go over to the shop and see what was going on there before heading out to claim the soul of S. Lyman on New Street at approximately four o’clock.

Gold was as happy to see her as he always was. Even though they had seen each other earlier in the day at the diner, he always smiled whenever she came into the shop as if he was seeing her for the first time after a long separation. Belle had to smile in return. It was a long time since she had been in a relationship and she had felt so… wanted.

The time passed quickly in easy conversation until it was time for her to go out to her reap, and she found Gold shutting up the shop and coming with her, continuing what they had been talking about until they reached the street and Belle had to concentrate on what she was about to do.

She hung around at the corner, kicking her heels and watching the people moving past in dribs and drabs. Reaps in big open spaces like this were always the worst; there were so many people about and it could have been any one of them, and there was never usually an easy way to tell without having to interact with people and ask them awkward questions. She’d taken to watching for the gravelings rather than the people, hoping that their actions would give her more of an idea of who exactly she had to look out for.

There were no gravelings in sight today though, no matter how much time she spent trying to look out of the corner of her eye to see if she could see them, and that worried her.

“What’s going on?” she asked Gold quietly. “I can’t see any risk factors that might cause an accident. I can’t see any gravelings either.”

Gold looked around the street. “No, you’re right, I can’t see any. It could always be that whatever they’ve done to set fate into motion doesn’t occur here. It could have happened miles away and it just so happens that everything comes to the end here.”

Belle looked at him. “You’re really not inspiring a lot of confidence here. It’s almost four o’clock and I’m still no closer to knowing whose soul I have to take. I know I’ve been getting a lot better at observing and learning from that, but I think that this might be my first missed reap.”

Reaps had been missed before, with the soul being pulled out just after death rather than before it, but in order to spare the soul the trauma of experiencing the death whilst inside the body, it was courteous to pull it before. The trouble with reaping after the fact was usually getting near enough to someone who was ostensibly a total stranger, especially near enough to touch them and get the soul out. Sudden deaths had a tendency to attract crowds, as Belle knew only too well.

She heard it then, and the moment that the sound reached her ears, she knew what was going to happen. A look around at the street told her who it was going to happen to, as well.

The sound that she had heard was a screech of car tyres. Someone was going to die in an accident. That someone was going to die in the same way that Belle herself had died.

Belle remembered her own death. Not her actual death, but the realisation of it, when she had seen her own shoes beneath the car and knew what had happened.

She couldn’t let that happen to someone else. Every bone in her body was screaming against it. Something in the back of her mind was telling her that this was fate, that she couldn’t change something that had already been pre-destined and that the gravelings had already set in motion. She knew that she couldn’t just refuse a reap and let the person die without taking their soul at all. She knew that she couldn’t intervene so that people never made it to their appointments with death.

But what if someone was there, and ready for their appointment, in the right place at the right time, and they just… didn’t actually die?

“Belle?” Gold must have caught the determination in her expression. “Belle?”

She only had a split second in which to act. The woman, her reap, was about to step off the pavement. The car was already on the road.

Ignoring Gold’s protests, Belle sprang into action, sprinting across the road and grabbing her reap out of the path of the out of control vehicle. It skidded past her, finally coming to a stop, and Belle looked at the terrified woman whose life and soul she had just saved instead of taken. People were running up all around her, but since the woman was unharmed and already in Belle’s capable hands, they steered clear of her, instead going over to the shaken car driver.

“You’re ok,” Belle said. “Everything’s going to be ok.”

The woman nodded, wide-eyed.

“Thank you,” she squeaked.

Belle felt a hand close around her upper arm and she looked over her shoulder to see Gold standing there. His expression was unreadable, but he really didn’t look all that happy to see what she had just done.

“Belle,” he said. “Can I have a word please?”

Belle left her reap and followed Gold around the corner into an alley, away from the fracas on the main street.

“What the hell did you do?” he demanded of her once they were alone.

“I saved her life,” Belle retorted. “What does it look like I did?”

“You were supposed to take her soul!”

Belle shook her head, turning away.

“Do you honestly expect me to see someone about to die in exactly the same way that I did and not want to spare them from that fate?” she asked. “Do you really think that I could do that? I couldn’t just stand there and let her die in the same way I did if I had the chance to prevent that! What’s so wrong with that?”

“Her time was up, Belle! Her soul was due for reaping!”

“And now it’s not and she’ll die some other day in some other way!” Belle snapped back. “I’ve given her years more!”

Gold shook his head. “No, you haven’t. Her soul is due. Her soul was always due. She was in time for her appointment, that means her soul has already expired.”

Belle didn’t like the sound of that, and fear coated the back of her throat.

“What do you mean?”

“Her soul is expired,” Gold said quietly. “Her soul met the appointment even if her body didn’t. You saved her body, not her soul. That’s already dying inside her now, and since it’s still trapped inside her, it can’t move on. It will wither, and die, and that young woman will just be a soulless shadow.”

Belle looked out of the alley, back at the young woman whose life she had thought she had saved.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me something as important as that?” she hissed. She wanted to scream at him, but she was very aware that there were people only a few yards away who would have been rather disturbed to hear the content of their argument.

“I didn’t think that you were going to go around saving people!” Gold replied.

“How can you not think that I wouldn’t try to save her? You saw me die, Alistair, it was only four months ago! How can you not think that experience wouldn’t still be with me?”

“I know, Belle. I know how hard this is for you, but you have to take her soul. We can’t save people, Belle. That’s not what we do. We help them on their way, but we cannot change their fates. Life and death don’t work like that.”

Belle turned on him, feeling the fury heating her face.

“If you want her dead so badly, you go on over there and take her soul!” she snarled.

Gold shook his head. “It’s your reap. It goes on your record. I can’t take it from you.”

“You gave it to me in the first place! You can take it back! Why would you ever make me do this? Why would you be so cruel?”

“Belle, I didn’t know that it was going to be a circumstance like this! I never know exactly how people are going to die!”

Belle shook her head, heading on out of the alley. She had to do it, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let this woman’s soul rot inside her, but that didn’t mean that she had to be happy about it, or that she had to forgive Gold for the horrible situation that he had put her in.

Her reap was still shaking as she approached, still so disbelieving of her lucky escape.

Belle wiped her eyes and took a deep breath before reaching out and touching her shoulder gently.

“Hey, are you ok? Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.”

She felt the wisp of soul and drew it out, and immediately, as if a switch had been flicked, the woman collapsed into Belle’s arms. Thankfully she didn’t have to shout for help, the others who had been crowding around the driver in the car came over to assist and took over, letting Belle slip away to burst into tears in privacy. She reached the alleyway where she had been ensconced with Gold and fell down onto her knees, howling with the misery and the unfairness of it all. She should have been able to do something. She should have been able to save one person. Just one person. That was all. Was that really too much to ask? They had so much power and yet they couldn’t use that power for good?

“Hey, are you ok?”

They were the same words that she had just spoken, and Belle looked up to see the young woman she’d just reaped looking at her. There was nothing but concern and kindness on her face, and that sent Belle into fresh floods of tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, I had to, I didn’t want to, I tried so hard to save you, but they wouldn’t let me. I’m so sorry.”

The woman crouched down beside her.

“I don’t really know what to say,” she said. “But I’m here.”

Belle just kept crying. She knew that she needed to get up. She knew that she needed to get her reap to her lights and bring this to a close once and for all; she was never going to be able to get over it whilst this poor woman’s soul was still hanging around her. All the same, the weight of it all pressing down on her was unbearable.

At last, she cried herself dry, and looked up to find the soul still crouching beside her.

“You’re really very calm,” Belle observed.

The woman shrugged. “Not a lot I can do to change it, so I might as well accept it.”

“What’s your name? I know it begins with S, but that’s all.”

“I’m Sophie.”

“Thank you, Sophie.” Belle got back to her feet, still feeling like her knees were going to give out at any moment, and she stepped out of the alley, Sophie following her. The lights were there and waiting, a white horse standing patiently beside the building. Sophie broke into a grin and ran up to the horse, getting onto its back without any visible assistance and riding off down the road on silent hooves before the lights swept her up into whatever was going to come next for her.

Belle looked around for Gold, but he appeared to have vanished. She thought that he had just stepped out of the alley to give her some space in which to break down in private, but no, it looked like he’d just left her in the lurch completely. She shivered, although she didn’t feel particularly cold. She didn’t feel anything apart from misery. She was numb to everything except the darkness clouding over her soul.

She wanted to rage. She wanted someone who would listen to her vent her anger at Gold, at her situation, at the fact that she was dead and she didn’t want to be and she had to go around taking the souls of all these other people who didn’t want to be dead either. Why did they get to move forward on the backs of white horses when she was doomed to stay here and repeat the trauma of her own death over and over again? Gold had said that she wasn’t going to hell, but right now, Belle couldn’t think of anything worse than her current predicament.

She moved on down the road blindly, not caring for her destination and barely caring for traffic. It wasn’t as if she could die twice, after all, and with tears still clouding her vision, it was a long time before she reached somewhere that she recognised and heard a voice calling her.

“Belle? Belle, sweetheart?”

It was Ella, trotting along the pavement after her in a cloud of Gucci perfume and cigarette smoke.

“Gold called me, he let me know what happened,” she said as she caught up. “Come on, let’s go somewhere inside and you can rant about how he’s an insensitive idiot as much as you like.”

Ella steered her inside the nearest coffee shop and folded her into a chair before going to get them some drinks. Belle stared at the steam coming off her mug of tea, not really taking it in at all.

“It’s just so unfair,” she said.

“I know.”

Ella didn’t try to justify it, or tell her that it wasn’t all that bad, or tell her that it was going to get easier the more that she did it.

“How can you stand it?” Belle asked.

“We all have our ways of getting by,” Ella said. “You might have noticed that my coping tendencies veer towards gin.”

It was, ironically, the soberest that she had ever seen Ella. It was like a layer of outrageousness had been pulled away, and she was seeing the real Ella for the first time.

“This life isn’t easy,” Ella continued. “You’ve lived it for long enough to know that now, but no matter what, it always finds new ways to kick you in the arse just when you think you’ve got the hang of it. I don’t imagine that Gold helped on that score.”

“He was just so  _cold_  about the whole thing. So brutal and matter of fact. As if it didn’t matter. As if my feelings weren’t important. As if I might not be traumatised by seeing someone else die in the same way I did.”

“I know,” Ella said. “Gold’s been dead a long time and he’s not likely to ever come across a reap that reminds him of his own death, not in this day and age. Considering what I know of those circumstances, I’m grateful for that, but at the same time, it doesn’t give him carte blanche to chastise you for your feelings.”

Belle gave a weak laugh. “I thought you were his friend.”

“I am. Friends are always the first people to call you out when you’re acting like a complete wanker.”

“And then he just vanished afterwards,” Belle continued. “That didn’t really help.”

“Well, that’s Gold.” Ella sighed. “He has a tendency to remove himself from situations that are getting awkward. Believe it or not, he does it for your preservation, not his own. He knows that he’s not your favourite person right now, so he thought that it would be easier for all parties if he absented himself so that you wouldn’t have to look at him.”

Belle groaned and flopped down onto the Formica table top, feeling it cool against her forehead.

“What if I want to see him?” she muttered. “What if I want to scream at him till I’m hoarse?”

“That is also part of the reason why he’s not around. He does have some sense of self-preservation as well.” Ella reached over and patted her shoulder. “Gold has a very complicated relationship with cowardice and conflict.”

Belle raised her head up a little and looked at Ella. “He fought in the first world war, didn’t he?”

Ella nodded curtly.

“Did he… Was he executed for cowardice? Was that how he died? I know, I know, it’s not your story to tell.”

Ella shook her head. “No, you’re right, it’s not my story. But no, that is not how he died. He’ll tell you those circumstances in his own time, but you may be waiting a while for them. As far as I can tell, I’m the only other reaper who knows.” She gave Belle a wan smile. “He’s an idiot, and he’s concerned about the reaps. He’s seen a lot and he’s seen reaps go wrong. That combination of things has, today, made him act like more of an arse than usual. You have every right to be mad at him.”

Belle sighed. “I can understand where he was coming from. I just… I couldn’t stand back and do nothing, and I don’t think he quite grasps that. I didn’t do it out of some spite for him and the powers that be.”

“I know that. You know that. Gold knows that. He’s just terrible at showing that he knows that. You know what he’s like with communication. It took us this long to get you two dating.”

Belle laughed. She was feeling a lot calmer now, and she took a deep breath, going over the events of the day, culminating in Sophie riding off into her lights. She had looked so happy then. She was free, she didn’t care that she was dead. All of that was behind her. She wasn’t like Belle; she wouldn’t be trapped here in this undead existence with all of the trauma of her death still hanging over her. It was all over for her, and it had all been over within a matter of a few minutes. She might not have been able to save Sophie from sharing the way she died, but Belle had the comfort of knowing that Sophie would not live on as a reaper in the way that Belle was. It was all over.

“Come on.” Ella patted her shoulder again. “Let’s get you home. It’s been a horrible day and you’re well within your rights to veg out on the sofa and watch really terrible soap operas until you feel better. At least with TV, you know that there’s always someone out there having a worse day than you are, even if they are fictional.”

They left the coffee shop and Ella linked her arm through Belle’s as they walked back in the direction of the apartment she shared with Dorothy.

“Do you have anyone, Ella?” Belle asked eventually. “Like me and Gold, and Mulan has her pen pal in Scotland, and Jefferson has his whoever he has.”

Ella shook her head. “No, my love life was a done deal a long time ago. I’m an outrageous flirt, but there was only ever one for me.”

“Do you ever find it lonely?”

“No, not at all. I’ll see her again eventually. She’s not going anywhere. She’ll be there whenever I get there, wherever there is. In the meantime, I just surround myself with fabulous friends. Like you.”

They walked on together for a while, and Belle finally felt her heart begin to lighten. If Ella could retain a positive outlook despite everything, then perhaps she could too.


	11. Chapter 11

Belle was surprised when the buzzer for her apartment went off. Dorothy was out for the evening, seeing her mystery lady again, and she wasn’t expecting any visitors. As per Ella’s advice, she was vegging out in front of  _The Bachelorette_  with a pint of strawberry ice cream, and whilst she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself per se, she was definitely feeling in need of pyjamas, ice cream and television that didn’t require a lot of intellectual brainpower.

The summons came again, and she went over to the intercom.

“Hello?”

_“Hello Belle. It’s Alistair. I’m really sorry about what happened earlier. Can we talk, please?”_

Belle paused with her finger hovering over the button to let him into the apartment, wondering if Ella had put him up to this or whether he had come around of his own accord. Either way, he was here, and he wanted to talk about it, and that was definitely a step in the right direction.

She buzzed him in and went to open the door, and a couple of minutes later she saw him round the corner from the stairwell. He was looking tired, but he smiled when he saw her standing in the doorway.

“Hi,” he said. “Is Dorothy in?”

“No, she’s got a date tonight, so she probably won’t be back till late. We can talk freely.”

Belle stood back to let him in and went to make some tea. She was still annoyed at him, but she was no longer in the same incoherent state of misery and anger that she had been in before.

“I wanted to apologise for the way I handled things earlier,” Gold began once they were sitting on the sofa with their tea – Belle had shoved the ice cream back in the freezer and turned the TV channel over to a more high-brow documentary about polar bears in an effort not to look like she’d been wallowing in self-pity _._ “I was an insensitive arsehole about the whole thing, and I’m sorry.”

Belle smiled. “Apology accepted. I can understand why you reacted the way you did, but you have to understand why I reacted the way I did as well. It’s still so new for me and so raw, and there are certain aspects of this reaping lifestyle that I still can’t get to grips with.”

“I know, and I should have taken that into account. We can’t save people from their appointments, Belle, however much we might want to. Believe me, there have been several instances where I’ve wanted to intervene, but we can’t. It just makes things even worse.”

“I know. I understand that now, but it would probably have been better to know that upfront so that I wasn’t tempted.”

“I’ll bear that in mind for the next time we get a new reaper and put it in the training manual,” Gold said. Belle had to laugh at that.

“You really, really do need a training manual,” she said. “I can just imagine you going around with a new reaper, carrying this huge lever-arch file full of all the rules and regulations and general advice. There could be a little exam at the end of it, like a reaper driving test.”

Gold gave a snort of laughter. “I’m really not quite sure where we’d be if we had reaping tests,” he said. “Every single one of us would fail for some reason or another. At any rate, I hope that we can put this behind us? It won’t happen again, I can assure you.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, I think that we can move on from this. It’s not the kind of thing that would happen more than once anyway. Maybe we both just need to think before we act a little more.”

“Or think before we speak,” Gold said. “For fear of opening mouth and inserting feet instead.”

Belle giggled. It meant a lot to her that Gold had come to apologise so quickly and that he recognised why she had been so upset in the first place.

“I’m sorry that I nearly screwed it up,” she said.

“You didn’t know,” Gold said. “It wasn’t something that I thought was going to be a problem, so it’s down to a lack of foresight on my part. We’ll say no more about it. The reap was successful in the end and the soul has moved on; that’s what’s important when it all comes down to it.”

Gold’s hand was resting on the table between them, as if he wanted to take hers but wasn’t sure if he would be welcome. Belle made the decision for him, grasping his fingers tightly in hers before going in for a kiss. It might be a bit soon for their first fight, and perhaps a bit soon for their first session of kissing and making up, but Belle didn’t care. Nothing about this relationship was the slightest bit conventional since the two participants were dead for starters, so she might as well make the most of it.

Gold smiled as she broke away.

“Would you like to go out somewhere?” he asked. “Just for a walk to clear the air and clear our heads. Ella has an evening double reap today, we could go and meet her afterwards.”

“That sounds good. We can let her know that all’s well in the world again. Thank you for calling her earlier. I was in such a state, I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t come after me.”

“You’re welcome. I knew that you needed someone, but I doubted that person would be me after what had just happened.”

Belle thought again about what Ella had said about Gold removing himself from situations, but she said nothing about it.

They left the apartment together and wandered around the town, down towards the river that ran through it. They didn’t talk much as they walked along the path, both lost in their own thoughts but content in the company that they had.

A little way along the path, they met Ella, who was looking a far cry from her usual outrageous self and instead seemed harried and stressed. She was holding two young men by the collars of their jackets and practically dragging them along the path after her.

Gold raised an eyebrow as she approached and stopped in front of him.

“Interesting reap, Ella?” he asked.

Ella just glared at him, then glared even more ferociously at the two men she was holding. Both of them had the decency to look contrite.

“These two  _utter idiots_  decided that it would be a good idea to hire a fishing boat, row out into the middle of the river and then proceed to take some incredibly powerful illicit substances and end up killing each other. They can’t even remember what they were arguing about now.”

The two men looked sheepish.

“Now, I am no stranger to illicit substances because I was around during the sixties and seventies and I did my fair share of experimentation,” Ella continued. “However, since I literally can’t die, I think that there were significantly less risks involved. Even so, I was never stupid enough to take LSD  _in a bloody rowing boat_!” She sighed heavily. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t had to row out as well to reap them. Do I look like the kind of person who rows?”

Belle couldn’t suppress a laugh at that, but thankfully Ella had returned to chastising the two souls and did not turn her death glare on her.

“All right, off you go. Go and kiss and make up and find your lights.”

She pushed the two of them gently along the river path, and a moment later Belle heard the now-familiar swoosh of their lights picking them up and taking them onto the next plane of existence.

“Well, that’s that,” Ella said decidedly. “I take it from your presence here in close proximity to each other that you two are on the right track as well? No-one’s gone and done or said anything to make matters worse?”

Gold shook his head. “No, we’re all right, thank you, Ella.”

“In that case, I suggest a victory cocktail at Aesop’s. The pina coladas are on me. All right, Gold, you can have a straight whisky. One of these days I’m going to get a picture of you drinking a mai tai.”

“You might have a very long wait, Ella.”

“I’m prepared for that.”

They walked on down the path together and Belle couldn’t help but smile as she slipped her hand surreptitiously into Gold’s. Things were going to be all right between them now.

X

Belle woke up happy and refreshed, with the memories of the previous evening still forefront in her mind. They’d had one drink with Ella before Gold had walked her home, and they had kissed again at the entrance to her building, a final confirmation that all was forgiven, and the afternoon’s mishap would not come between them again. Dorothy had arrived back later, and from the whispers and giggles and urgings to please be quiet I have a roommate and I don’t want to wake her up, it was evident that she had brought her date back home with her.

Belle didn’t really think much on the topic of Dorothy bringing her date home with her until the next morning. It didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to Belle what Dorothy did in her love life. It only became a problem when she walked into the kitchen to get her morning tea and found Ruby standing there by the kettle.

It was the first time that Belle had come face to face with Ruby since becoming a reaper, and she had no idea what to say. She knew that Ruby didn’t recognise her. She knew that to Ruby, she wasn’t Belle anymore. She was Lacey, Dorothy’s roommate to whom Ruby had not yet been introduced.

Therefore, standing there staring at Ruby open-mouthed probably wasn’t the best way to go about things.

Luckily, Ruby wasn’t looking in her direction, so Belle had time to compose herself and try to work out what she was going to say. Hopefully any awkwardness could be put down to the inherently awkward circumstance of finding one’s roommate’s girlfriend in the kitchen one morning.

It was at that moment that Ruby turned and saw her.

“Oh, erm, hi.”

“Hi. I’m Lacey, Dorothy’s roommate.”

“Ruby. Dorothy’s, well, girlfriend, I guess.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ruby.”

“Likewise.”

Ruby moved aside to let Belle get to the kettle and make herself some tea, and Belle pointedly tried to avoid her friend’s eye. She probably looked ridiculous, but Ruby seemed to be feeling just as embarrassed by the situation as she was. It wasn’t embarrassment at all on Belle’s part. She was trying so desperately to suppress the urge to tell her friend who she really was and catch up with everything that had been going on in the last couple of months since her death. So far she had been doing very well at not wanting and not trying to interact with her old life; she had embraced her reaping existence as fully as she could bring herself to. Now though, there was no avoiding with it. Her old life was interacting with her, rather than the other way around.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” she said quickly once her tea was made, and she hurried back through into her bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it, closing her eyes. When Gold had said that living with Dorothy would only be a short-term solution because the living and the dead couldn’t really cohabit, she’d taken his words with a pinch of salt. Now though, she knew exactly what he meant. If Ruby and Dorothy’s relationship continued, which Belle hoped that it would since both ladies really did deserve love and happiness in their lives, then it was going to be impossible for Belle to carry on living in the apartment. There was far too much chance of something going wrong and her letting slip something that could ruin everything.

Still, that was something to think about at a later stage. For the immediate future, Ruby probably wouldn’t be hanging around too much and Belle had time to think up her next move.

Unbidden, she found her thoughts drifting back to Gold and her budding relationship with him, and she realised that she still had no idea where he actually lived. She wondered what it might be like to wake up in a home that wasn’t her own and wander around making tea, waiting for her lover to wake, remembering the night that they had just spent together.

Belle shook her head and went over to sit on her bed, drinking her tea and trying to push those thoughts out of her head. It was far too soon for her to be thinking about that stage of their relationship just yet, but all the same, a bit of daydreaming surely wouldn’t hurt. Gold was a good-looking man, and if she was wondering what he might look like underneath the three-piece suit that he always wore like armour, then she wasn’t doing anyone any harm. Except possibly herself when she exploded from lust the next time that she saw him.

She sighed. Gold came from a different era, after all. The last time that he’d had a relationship, the way of going about it had been very different. Although he seemed to have moved with the times in most senses, she got the feeling that getting him into bed might be a bit difficult, no matter how much they both might want it. Well, assuming that Gold did want it and did feel the same way about her that she did about him. Dating was one thing. Going further than dating was quite another, and it was only now that she was taking into account Gold’s history that she really realised how disparate the two notions were and how caught up in each other they had become over the years of relationship etiquette and behaviour evolving.

She supposed that the only way would be to take each day as it came. It wasn’t as if they were on some kind of a tight schedule for this relationship after all. They had all the time in the world to get it right, and if that meant taking things slowly to start with, then Belle was happy with that. She was an impulsive soul, she always had been, as she had proved so dramatically with her reap the previous day. Forcing herself to put a bit more thought into things wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The gift that she had been given in this relationship with Gold, when she had thought that love and romance would be off the table for the entirety of her very long afterlife, wasn’t one that she wanted to squander in any way. It was something precious, and she intended to treat it as such. It was a second chance at happiness in an existence that might otherwise have been incredibly bleak.

All the same, that didn’t mean that she had to wait for Gold to make the next move. They were both in this thing together, after all, and it was the twenty-first century. Why shouldn’t she take matters into her own hands?

X

It was a Sunday, and therefore there was no post for Belle to deliver. Gold had been keeping half an eye on the shop door all morning, wondering if she would put in an appearance. They had made up after the events of the afternoon that had caused what might have been an irreparable rift between them had it been left to fester, and they had left each other in a good place.

Still, that didn’t mean that he could necessarily monopolise Belle’s attention or expect her to spend all her free time in the shop with him. She had other friends, other interests, and it was good that she was getting to know her fellow reapers and feel a little less lonely in their isolated world.

“Are you looking out for Lacey?” Henry asked, bringing Gold back into the present. He coughed, embarrassed at having been caught out so obviously, and shook his head.

“No, of course not. That would be preposterous.”

“I really don’t think that it would,” Henry said. “You like her, she likes you. I think it would be good for you to have a friend who’s not me.”

“I have plenty of friends who are not you, Henry,” Gold said.

Henry just raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, and Gold despaired inwardly at just how good the boy was at reading people.

“Of course,” he said smoothly. “I know. But that aside, I think that it would be good for you to have a girlfriend.”

“Lacey is not my girlfriend.”

Except, she was really, wasn’t she? They were dating, and kissing, and holding hands… Yes, Belle was definitely his girlfriend. Gold had never had a girlfriend before. The term hadn’t been coined when he’d been courting Milah.

Henry just looked at him but made the wise decision not to pursue the line of enquiry any further, settling for smiling to himself and knowing that Gold was in a terrible state of denial. Gold just sighed and handed him a stack of old newspapers.

“If you’re looking for something to keep you entertained, you can get going on wrapping up those ceramic dogs ready for delivery,” he said. “Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful whilst you’re teasing me about my love life.”

“I’m just glad you have a love life, Mr Gold. Everybody needs somebody, you know.”

Gold didn’t respond and cast a final glance back at the door before going back to the ledger in which he kept all his stock and continuing to make the monthly count. The shop never received much business on a Sunday – not that it received all that much business throughout the rest of the week either – and he wasn’t expecting much fluctuation to alter his figures. It was only once he hadn’t heard Henry speak for a while that he glanced over at the boy to find him engrossed in one of the papers.

“It’s a good job that I don’t pay you, or I’d be docking wages for reading on the job,” he said. “What’s got you so interested?”

Henry’s brow was furrowed as he looked intently at the paper, and he didn’t respond at first.

“Henry?” Gold pressed. “Are you all right?”

Henry nodded slowly. “It’s nothing,” he said eventually. “It’s just this picture in the paper.”

Gold came over and leaned over Henry’s shoulder, looking at what had caught Henry’s attention. His stomach gave a nervous flip when he saw that it was Belle’s obituary from a couple of months back, complete with a picture of Belle when she’d been alive, standing outside the library.

“She looks a lot like Lacey,” Henry said. “I thought it was her for a moment.”

“Well, they do say that everyone has a doppelgänger,” Gold said, trying to sound as unconcerned and nonchalant as he could. He’d long suspected that there was something about Henry when it came to his interactions with the reapers, but he’d never had any kind of concrete proof that he could see their true faces until now.

“I guess so.” Henry gave Belle’s picture a final look and then scrunched up the sheet, shoving it into the box to cushion the ceramic dogs that would be sent out on Monday to their new owner. With any luck, that would be the end of the conversation and it would not come up again. None of the rest of his reaping crew were in a position for Henry to be able to identify them from life, so there was no cause for concern, and in this day and age, hopefully everything could just be put down to uncanny resemblance rather than anything sinister or supernatural.

All the same, he was intrigued. What was it about Henry that allowed him to see the reapers’ true faces when no-one else living could?

He was pulled out of his musings by the shop bell chiming, and Belle walking in. She waved to Henry, who waved back happily, showing no signs of being disturbed by her presence.

“I can’t stop,” Belle said. “I’m on my way to meet Mulan, but I just wanted to ask if you’d like to come over for dinner tomorrow? Dorothy will be working so it’ll just be the two of us. I’m not the world’s greatest cook, but I haven’t poisoned myself yet.”

Gold smiled. “I would love to, thank you.”

Belle beamed. “All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow. We can work out the details later. Bye Henry!”

She rushed out again as quickly as she had entered, and Henry gave Gold a sage look.

“She is definitely your girlfriend.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that with this chapter the rating has gone up!!

Belle would admit to feeling a little bit giddy as well as a little bit nervous, and she wondered how much of her nervousness and giddiness was down to the weather. Summer had finally come to Storybrooke, and with the increased heat had come an increased sense of liberation and lowered inhibitions.

She had been astonished when she’d walked into the diner that morning in the middle of her rounds in order to collect her post-its for the day and had seen Gold not only not wearing his jacket, but also not wearing his tie or waistcoat. Even as the weather had been getting steadily warmer over the past couple of months, she had never seen him looking anything less than immaculate in his three-piece suit and tie in public. She’d seen him without his jacket when he was in the back room of the shop, or when he was in his own home, but she’d never seen him wearing this few layers.

For a while she had been working on the principle that perhaps, having been dead for as long as he had, the outside temperature of the world didn’t affect him, but since all of the other reapers, herself included, had been complaining about the heat for the past week, she’d come to the conclusion that he was just strange.

Now though, he had proved that he was just as human as the rest of them.

“Darling!” Ella exclaimed as she came in. “Whatever has come over you? You’re practically naked!”

This rather loud statement attracted the attention of everyone in the diner, and Gold sighed, rubbing his forehead and holding out Ella’s post-it for her.

“Thank you, Ella, for that wonderful start to the morning,” he said. “We’re not at all inconspicuous now.”

“Gold, we sit here every morning discussing death and receiving cryptic post-it notes; we couldn’t be more suspicious if we tried,” Ella said happily, squeezing into the booth next to David, who was trying very hard not to laugh at her antics, knowing that Gold wouldn’t appreciate it. Belle, on the other hand, focussed intently on her fruit salad and refused to meet the eyes of anyone else around the table. The idea of Gold being practically naked was one that she’d been revisiting an awful lot over the last couple of months of their being together, and now that the weather was warmer, and her blood was warmer with it, she found herself revisiting it even more frequently, usually in the dead of night in the company of her vibrator.

Tonight, though, Belle thought that perhaps heady daydreams might finally become reality. Gold had invited her over for dinner, which was not in and of itself an invitation for something more. They had both cooked for each other on several occasions over the last few weeks of their relationship, and whilst there was usually kissing involved at some point during the evening, there had never been any intimation of going any further than that.

Except today, Belle had decided that she was going to take matters into her own hands, literally if necessary. She’d been reading all the signals, and she thought that the time was right to make her move. Their kisses had been getting much more heated recently, and hands had been wandering from the more chaste positions that they had started in. If they were in Gold’s house, in his domain, then perhaps he would be more comfortable with taking the next step that she was sure they both wanted.

“Belle?”

Belle finally tuned back into the conversation in the diner to find that Gold and Ella had left, evidently having been unable to penetrate her daydream to say goodbye, and David was on the point of going as well. He was wearing a wry smile, and just gave her a wink as he left his money on the table for Granny and went out of the diner.

Belle just groaned, resting her head on the counter.

“What’s up, Belle?” Mulan asked. “You’ve been distracted the entire time you’ve been here, and you didn’t look at Gold once. Has something happened between you two?”

Belle shook her head quickly. “No, no, everything’s going smoothly. Nothing’s happened.” She paused. She could trust Mulan with her relationship worries. The only other person she’d ever had to talk about them was Ruby, who, although present at Dorothy’s apartment ever more frequently, was still off the menu.

“I sense a ‘but’.” Mulan gave her a knowing look. “Come on. Out with it. Unburden all your frustrations on me, whatever they might be.”

“Well, I think in a way, it might be the fact that nothing’s happened that’s the problem, if you get my drift.”

Mulan nodded. “I understand all right. There’s an itch that you really want to scratch with him, but you don’t think he’s interested in scratching it?”

“Oh no, I think he’s interested,” Belle said. “I just don’t think that he’s going to act on that interest without persuasion.”

“Well, he is nearly one hundred and fifty years old, so it’s probably not that surprising that he still has some Victorian values kicking about in there. There’s only so much that you can move with the times.” Mulan grinned. “But if you think that he needs persuasion, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t try and persuade him. It might be fun.”

Belle bit her lip, thinking about the forthcoming date that evening and wondering exactly how to go about it. She’d never really planned a seduction before; with her previous boyfriends, the bedroom stage had just happened by mutual agreement after a few dates.

“What if it goes wrong though? I’ll be at his house, and I don’t really want to have to do the walk of shame before anything’s even happened.”

“Well, if it does all go wrong, all you have to do is call me and I’ll come to your aid, and we can moan about the obtuseness of men together.”

“Mulan, you’re a lesbian.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have experience when it comes to the obtuseness of men. The difference is that mine is usually because I  _don’t_  want them to sleep with me.”

Belle laughed. “All right. If it all goes pear-shaped, you can be my knight in shining armour.”

“You’ll be fine. If you both want it then it’ll happen, even if it does take a little while. You’ve got to take these opportunities when you can get them.”

Belle gave Mulan a sage look; her friend was looking rather excited and she didn’t think that it was down to the hopefully imminent rekindling of Belle’s sex life.

“Is there some news I was not aware of?” she asked.

Mulan nodded.

“Merida’s got some time off and she’s coming over. Gold’s agreed to let me have a couple of days without reaps so we can spend some uninterrupted time together. It’s going to be a weekend of sex and whisky and jokes about bears and I can’t wait.”

“That’s great news, Mulan, I’m really happy for you.” Belle didn’t question the jokes about bears.

“I know. Now all we have to do is get you and Gold on the right track as well, and everyone will be well satisfied.”

Belle smiled, but Mulan made it sound so easy.

X

It was almost time to go, and Belle had been pacing up and down her bedroom for over an hour, wondering what to wear. She’d changed her outfit about three times and she was still second-guessing her underwear. In the end she’d decided on a light blue dress as a concession to the heat, and pale cream underwear that she felt comfortable in. There was no use in her wearing red satin and lace if she was going to be turning bright crimson herself as soon as he saw it. If she was going to be taking the lead in this next stage of their relationship, then she needed to be able to do that and not wonder about what he thought of her underwear.

She was going to be thinking about that anyway, no matter what she wore, but at least in this familiar set she’d be happier and more confident in herself.

It was time to go. She grabbed her purse, checked that there were condoms in there, although, could she get pregnant or carry venereal diseases if she was technically dead? Well, better safe than sorry; that wasn’t a conversation that she wanted to be having with Gold in the heat of the moment. They could discuss that after the fact once the deed had been done and she wasn’t quite as nervous about instigating the whole thing.

God, she wanted him so much, that wasn’t the problem. She’d been thinking about sleeping with him for weeks now. It wasn’t the act itself that was making her nervous. It was how to get to the act in the first place. If she could just flip a switch and have both of them naked and falling into bed together then life would be much easier.

Belle left the apartment and walked the few blocks out of the town centre towards the suburbs and Gold’s house. It was one of those buildings that she’d passed often in her post rounds and never knew who lived there, a house with obvious history and character, standing alone and quite distinct from the other houses around it. When she’d found out that Gold lived in this very house, she’d immediately showered him with questions about it and they’d spent the entirety of the evening just talking about the sprawling salmon pink place he called home.

She took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. Would he know that she was planning to seduce him? Would he be receptive to her efforts if he did?

Gold was still looking casual when he opened the door; even more casual than he had been in the diner. His usual dress shirt had been switched for a more casual linen one and he was wearing jeans. Belle had never thought about Gold wearing jeans before. She’d become so used to seeing him wearing suits that she didn’t think he even owned a pair of jeans, and it took her several seconds of staring at him to realise that they were still standing in the doorway and she hadn’t actually said hello yet.

“Hi,” she managed eventually.

Gold chuckled. “I know, it’s the jeans, they throw everyone the first time.”

“I just… You’re always so attached to your suits,” Belle said as she stepped inside and he closed the door after her. “Don’t get me wrong, you look good in your suits. You look good not in your suits too. I mean, you look good now,” she added hastily, not wanting him to get the wrong impression even if that was exactly what she was trying to lead up to later. No sense in running before she could walk, and right now walking was proving a challenge when she was transfixed by Gold’s arse in his denim. Good grief, how was she ever going to get through dinner like this?

She took a deep breath to compose herself and followed him through to the kitchen. Chicken was sizzling on the stove and there was a large salad bowl on the side that he was chopping spring onions into.

“I didn’t think we’d want anything too heavy,” he said. “It’s so warm out; turning the oven on would just make us roast in here as well.”

Belle accepted the glass of wine that he offered her and sat down at the table, watching as he finished up the meal. She supposed that his cooking prowess came from so many more years of experience having to fend for himself than she had. And having to fend for Ella, if the tales of her kitchen disasters were to be believed.

“You should wear jeans more often,” she commented. “We never see you out and about looking casual. I think it would help with the PR, you know. You’re the only grim reaper who always actually looks the part in your dark suits.”

Gold shrugged. “It’s a throwback to pawnbroking,” he said. “I don’t get as much custom in that area as I used to, I mainly just deal antiques now, but it used to be very lucrative. As a pawnbroker I always used to dress in the best I could afford. It gives people confidence that you have the money that they need so desperately. Besides. I like wearing suits. Just like you like wearing your high heels.”

Belle looked down at her feet, encased in strappy silver sandals with a four-inch heel.

“I guess so. I don’t get to wear them for work, though.”

Although delivering the mail was always intended to be a temporary job until she could get on her feet and find something else, Belle had found it so useful when going about her reaps that she didn’t want to quit now. It was hard work a lot of the time and she was out in all weathers, but she found that she really didn’t mind it, and being out in the early mornings before the rest of the world was awake, seeing the town wake up around her, had given her a brand-new appreciation for this second chance at life.

“Yes. I think that people might have to double-take at a post lady going around on her bike wearing stilettos.”

The chicken was done, and Gold brought the food over to the table. The kitchen was a cosy place, perhaps a little too warm to be eating in there in the summer, but Belle liked the intimate atmosphere. Hopefully it would lead to even more intimate things a little down the line.

Once he’d finished eating, Gold sat back in his chair, running a hand through his hair and letting out a long breath.

“Shall we move to the living room for dessert?” he asked. “I think it might be cooler in there, it doesn’t get as much sun in it during the day.”

Belle was happy to oblige. The living room was far more suited to what she had in mind anyway.

Dessert was a strawberry cheesecake with ice-cream. For all he was generally good in the kitchen, Gold was terrible with desserts and always went for store-bought, which was fine in Belle’s book. As long as it had sugar in it and tasted good, then she was happy with it, and a small part of her did enjoy having something that she was better at than him despite him having been around for so much longer than her. He had always been incredibly appreciative of her baking skills whenever he had been round for a meal at her place, and the memory of his compliments made her smile.

She kept stealing little glances at him as they ate, wondering if his mind was going in the same direction as hers was. This was different for them, it was something new. They were eating in the living room as the sun went down, and Gold was the most casual and relaxed that she had ever seen him. She felt like she had been let into some kind of inner sanctum, and she hoped that meant what she thought it did. She hoped that it was an invitation to get a little bit further into that sanctum. Maybe to the upstairs.

He’d given her a full tour of the house when she’d asked for it that first time she had come over, but this was a different matter.

It was time to test the water. Belle put down her empty bowl and slid a little closer to him on the sofa.

“That was delicious, thank you,” she said. “It’s been a wonderful evening altogether.”

There was something that could make it even more wonderful, but Belle didn’t say that just yet. She waited for Gold to put down his wine glass before going in for a kiss. He accepted her readily, hands splaying over her back to pull her in closer. They’d come this far before, and now it was time to see if they could go any further.

“It has been wonderful,” Gold agreed once they finally broke away. He licked his lips where they had touched Belle’s, and she could see that his eyes were bright with some kind of unspoken desire. The next thing would be to see if she could actually get him to speak it.

“It doesn’t have to end yet, though,” Belle said. She kissed him again and he surrendered into it, almost melting into her embrace. If he kissed her like this all over, then she would die and go to heaven. “I mean, I don’t have to go home just yet,” she added. “In fact, I don’t have to go home tonight at all. It’s not like I have to be up early to do my post round in the morning.”

For a long moment, Gold didn’t react, and Belle wondered if she had been picking up the wrong vibes from him and this wasn’t going in the direction she thought it had been. Had she been too obvious? Not obvious enough?

“I don’t want tonight to end either,” he said eventually. “Would you like to stay the night? Here? With me? I mean, actually  _with_ me.” There was hope in his voice, but he looked so sweetly unsure, as if he couldn’t quite dare to hope that this evening was going in the direction he had hoped for.

Belle nodded eagerly. “I would love to stay,” she said. “I, erm, I may have brought my toothbrush with me.”

Gold laughed, and he pulled her in close for another kiss. There was nothing reserved in this kiss. It was clear that he wasn’t holding back at all. He wanted this just as much as she did, he just hadn’t had any real idea how to go about initiating it. Belle pressed in closer, scrabbling into his lap so that she could snuggle closer into his chest. Now that she was here, in this position, and she could feel the heat flooding through her veins and pooling between her thighs, she realised just how long it had been since she had last been this intimate with another person. She wondered how long it would have been for Gold. If she had been the first woman he’d dated throughout his afterlife, then she doubted that he would have gone any further with anyone, especially not if his unsureness around this encounter was anything to go by.

She let him up for air and smiled at his dumbstruck expression for a moment before diving back in. She wanted to show him just how much she wanted this. She didn’t want him to have any doubts or second guess himself at all. It had taken them long enough to start dating in the first place, and now that she was so close to what she wanted and what she needed, she wasn’t going to let awkwardness or old-fashioned formalities get in the way.

Shifting in his lap, she could feel his erection beginning to stir, and he broke away.

“Should we go upstairs?” he suggested.

Belle nodded, sliding off his lap and holding out a hand to pull him up off the sofa. The dirty dishes could wait, but she grabbed the wine bottle and Gold brought the glasses, following her up the stairs then showing her into his bedroom.

It was a beautiful room, all expensive drapes and dark wood, and she certainly could not say that the décor did not suit his usual mode of dress and sardonic personality, but all the same, he didn’t look all that at home in it right now, hovering in the doorway as she looked around.

“Are you all right?” she asked, going over and slipping her arms around his middle. Gold nodded.

“I’m just… I suppose I’m just a little nervous, that’s all.” He sighed, resting his forehead against hers in a little nudge of intimacy and trust that made Belle’s heart melt for him afresh. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve done this, Belle, and I really don’t want to let you down.”

“I’m sure that you won’t. I just want to be with you. That’s all I want. I don’t want the moon and the stars. I just want you, Alistair.”

“Then you shall have me, Belle.”

He kissed her again, walking her backwards slowly until she hit the foot of the bed and she kicked her shoes off, getting onto the bed and shuffling up until she could lay back against the pillows, beckoning him in closer to her. He followed with a smile, capturing her lips again as she pulled him down against the bedcovers with her, sinking into the plush cushions.

“I’m glad you’re not wearing your usual suit today,” Belle said, her fingers coming to the buttons of his shirt and beginning to slip each one through its hole. “It would have taken years to get you out of all your layers.”

Gold chuckled and sat up to let her push the shirt from his shoulders, her hands mapping his slim chest. There was a self-consciousness in his expression that Belle just wanted to kiss away, and she twisted to show the zipper of her dress.

“Would you do the honours?”

“Most certainly.”

He needed help with her bra fastening, but once Belle was topless as well, grabbing his hands and pushing her breasts up into his palms, he seemed to gain in confidence, and the rest of their clothes were discarded into the heap on the floor in short order afterwards.

“I brought condoms,” Belle said, punctuating her words with kisses. “I didn’t know whether we’d need them. Do things like that affect us?”

Gold shook his head. “No, we don’t need them. Unless you want to use one, of course. I don’t mind.”

“No, I’m all right. I just wanted to check. I’m glad we don’t need one.” She eyed his cock, standing to eager attention, and Belle could feel the heat rising between her legs as she welcomed him between her thighs.

“Oh Belle…” Gold’s voice was practically reverent as he smoothed her tousled curls out of her face, resting his forehead against hers. “Belle, sweetheart…”

“Yes,” Belle breathed. “Come on inside, Alistair. I want you inside me.” She was so hot, so desperate to be touched and to release the tension that was thrumming through her veins, and she groaned with anticipation as Gold nodded, reaching down to line up with her entrance and pressing into her slowly. His movements were unsure, and Belle nudged his thigh with her foot to get him to go a little deeper.

“You won’t hurt me, you know,” she said. “You can go a little harder.”

Gold nodded. “I know. I just want to savour the moment.”

Belle kissed him then, her tongue exploring his mouth and tasting every inch, and finally he began to thrust and give her the wonderful friction that she needed. He felt so good inside, just what she wanted, and she brought her legs around his back to bring him in closer, as close as she could get him.

“Belle, I can’t last, I can’t hold it…”

“Then don’t.”

She felt the rush of heat inside her as he came, his face buried in her shoulder and her name a whisper on his lips, and Belle closed her eyes with a smile. She hadn’t come, but she wouldn’t have traded this moment of togetherness for the world.

“Are you all right?” Gold asked, pulling out and rolling onto his side as he began to soften. He brought one hand to her breast, rubbing a thumb over her nipple.

“I’m perfect.”

“Even though you didn’t…”

“You made me feel good, Alistair, that’s all that matters.” She didn’t ever want him to stop touching her, or to move from his arms. He trailed his hands down from her breasts to cup her bottom, kneading her ass cheeks a little, and Belle pressed in close against him.

“Just hold me, Alistair.”

“Oh Belle, sweetheart, I’ll never let you go.”

They stayed cuddled close in the moonlight, exchanging soft kisses and caresses until Belle felt sleep overtake her, still smiling at the moment they had shared; the first of hopefully many more to come.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW for this chapter:** mentions of alcoholism and drink driving, brief suicide mention.
> 
> **NB:** I’ve changed the mechanics of reaping animals from the source material, mainly because I don’t like the original series’ way of doing it.

It was early when Gold woke to sunlight creeping around the edges of the blinds in his bedroom; too early to get out of bed and begin the day. He glanced over at Belle beside him. She’d turned over onto her stomach in her sleep, facing away from him, and all he could make out was the messy mass of rich brown curls on the pillow beside him.

Her arm was still thrown across his chest, holding on tight, and Gold laced his fingers through hers, looking up at the ceiling.

Last night hadn’t exactly gone to plan. He wasn’t sure what the plan had been, exactly, but he knew that it could certainly have been better. If he’d had doubts about his abilities before, then his performance last night hadn’t exactly assuaged them. The ceiling didn’t provide any kind of answer and he didn’t know who would be able to help him out at all. This wasn’t really the kind of thing that he could talk to Ella about. Whilst he was certain that she wouldn’t bat an eyelid, the very idea of talking to her about his sex life made him cringe. David was probably his best bet, but at the same time, the heat of embarrassment crept through his veins every time he thought of broaching the subject.

How did you broach the subject anyway? Until last night, it had been over a hundred years since he had last had sex, so he thought that he could be forgiven being a bit rusty, but at the same time, he knew that moving with the times was essential.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t moved with the times. He just wasn’t sure how to go about getting up to date when it came to bedroom activities. When he’d last been indulging in such things, sex before marriage was practically unheard of and since his wife was the only woman he’d ever been with before Belle, he wasn’t exactly endowed with a great deal of experience as it was, the century of celibacy notwithstanding. Milah had never exactly sung his praises back when he had been alive, and he evidently hadn’t improved by magic.

Logically, Gold knew that the age-old adage of practice making perfect was probably in effect here. All the same, the idea of being so bad that he needed to practise wasn’t exactly encouraging. When it came down to it, he really had no idea what women liked and the only way to find out would be through either prudent and lengthy research, or by just asking outright.

Somehow, he felt like the former option would be safer.

Beneath the covers, his cock was beginning to stir with morning glory, and he slipped out of Belle’s hold on him to go to the bathroom, grabbing his robe from the closet on the way. He had never much liked the sight of himself naked, and even less so in the stark early morning light. Looking in the mirror over the sink at his greying hair and stubble coming through as he washed his hands, he wondered what Belle could ever have seen in him to make her want him like this, want him so much that they had fallen into bed together without Gold really planning it.

Was this all a terrible mistake? A small part of him wondered what would happen now. Their relationship had become an intimate and physical one, but he really didn’t want Belle to regret taking that step.

He was overthinking it, he knew he was, and if Ella were there, she’d tell him so and probably smack him upside the head and tell him to just get back into bed and start with the practising. As it was, Ella wasn’t there, and Gold began to worry. On the one hand, it was probably a good thing that they’d done this now and not waited because waiting any longer would not have improved his technique at all. In fact, it would probably have had the opposite effect and made everything even worse. On the other hand, there was always the forlorn hope that something out there could have changed him into a sex god.

He shook his head. There was no point in dwelling on the past and things that could not be changed. He spent enough time telling his reapers that, so he should probably start taking the advice himself, although it usually referred to events of past lives rather than events of only a few hours ago. Still, however much, or little time had passed, it couldn’t be changed.

He returned to the bedroom as Belle stirred, turning over in bed and stretching, giving him a sleepy smile as she opened her eyes and saw him standing in the doorway.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

She nodded. “Yes. You have great pillows. I could stay snuggled up in this bed forever.”

Gold chuckled. “You might get hungry.”

“Well, you’d just have to bring me breakfast in bed then.” She gave him a sly grin. “Unless you’re offering something even more delicious?”

Gold knew that he really shouldn’t panic at the suggestion, but logic was taking a back seat in his mind this morning. The sex must have completely scrambled his brains, because instead of getting back into bed and trying to make up for what could only have been a somewhat disappointing encounter last night, he made to leave the bedroom again.

“I’ll fix some breakfast.”

He caught Belle’s little puzzled look as he left the room and as soon as the door had swung closed behind him, he gave a mute groan, resting his head against the wall. Yes, he had officially screwed that one up completely. Part of him really wanted to just stay standing out here on the landing with his head against the wall because then at least he knew that he wouldn’t be doing anything to make the now screamingly awkward situation any worse.

Unfortunately, standing in the hallway all morning wasn’t going to be an option, and he moved away, going down towards the kitchen. Since he’d said he was going to get breakfast, he should probably make good on that promise.

Gold dithered in front of the fridge, looking at eggs and fruit and bread and wondering what to make. Finally, he decided that coffee was probably the best way to start and he closed the fridge again. He needed to say something to Belle when he went back upstairs, preferably something that would smooth everything over and explain to her in a very few clear and concise words that he was sorry about his performance the previous night and he hoped that she wouldn’t hold it against him and would still want to continue their relationship even if he did need lessons in female pleasure and how to achieve it.

Before he could think up his speech, however, Belle appeared in the kitchen doorway, fully-dressed, although with her hair still messy where she’d finger-combed through it.

Well, that made things even more awkward than they had been before, and he had no idea what to say as he brought a mug of coffee over to her. At least she was actually sitting at the table and not bolting for the door as soon as possible. God, he had no idea how to salvage this situation, and the next few minutes were spent in an agonisingly tense silence, each of them waiting for the other to say something to make things flow in their normal easy rhythm again. Before last night, they had been going along very nicely without any kind of misunderstandings, and now, Gold had no idea where he was going now.

They continued to sip their coffee. Gold knew that he really ought to be saying something. Should he thank her for last night? Say that he was looking forward to the next time? Was there even going to be a next time? He didn’t want to appear presumptuous; just because he’d had a good time didn’t mean that Belle had, and it really didn’t appear that she had. She’d said at the time that it didn’t matter, but had that just been to spare his feelings?

In the end, indecision kept him from saying anything, and awkwardness kept Belle from saying anything as well until her coffee mug was empty.

“I should probably go,” she said. “I’ll see you later at the post-it handout?”

Gold nodded. He really wanted to say something to make her stay, but he had no idea what to say that wouldn’t sound ridiculous, since the only thing that he could think of at that moment was to protest that she hadn’t had any breakfast. She could get breakfast at the diner later. Why was he thinking about breakfast so much? Probably to stop him thinking about anything else.

Belle set her mug down by the sink and came over, bending to kiss him on the lips. There was something in the kiss, not quite an urgency but still something fiery and passionate, and Gold slipped his arms around her neck, wondering if he could get her to stay without needing to actually say anything, trying to put all of his confused and jumbled feelings into the kiss instead.

Eventually though, Belle pulled away. There was a little smile on her face, but it did not quite reach her eyes.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours at the diner.”

Gold was enough of a gentleman not to make her see herself out, and he stood in the front doorway for a long time after she had disappeared from sight down the driveway, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do next and who on earth he could turn to for advice.

X

“Are you all right?”

Belle startled on hearing Mulan’s voice and she looked up to see her friend peering at her with a concerned expression. Thanks to her rather earlier than expected departure from Gold’s house that morning, she had been the first to arrive at the diner for the post-it handout and she’d spent so long just staring into space on her own, letting her pancakes go cold as she relived the events of the previous evening and the morning, that she had completely forgotten that there were about to be other people coming to sit with her and she should probably at least try to make it look like nothing was wrong.

“Yes, yes, I’m ok. Miles away.”

Mulan slid into the booth opposite her and looked down at the uneaten pancakes. “I can see that.”

Belle pushed the pancakes towards her. “You can have them; I’m not really hungry.”

Mulan picked up the cutlery and was about to take a bite of pancake when she stopped and looked at Belle with a raised eyebrow.

“I have never known you turn down pancakes before, Belle,” she said. “Something is definitely up.”

Belle sighed. “Yes… No… Oh, I don’t know. This is already awkward enough as it is, don’t make it any more awkward.”

“Ok.” Mulan tucked into the pancakes. “Well, I’m here if you do want to talk about it. Did you and Gold have a fight or something?”

“No. Well, not exactly. At least, I don’t think we did.”

Once more, Mulan paused with a bite of pancake halfway to her mouth.

“I think you would know if you’d had a fight,” she pointed out sagely.

“We haven’t had a fight. It’s just… things got kind of weird this morning and I don’t know why, or how to put them right. I don’t know if it’s something I did, or something he did, or what. He just won’t talk to me.”

“Right. I think I’m going to need coffee to deal with this problem.”

Belle dutifully remained silent until Mulan’s coffee had arrived, and her friend took a few large gulps before speaking again.

“Ok, considering what we were talking about yesterday, and what I know that you hoped was going to happen last night, and considering that you said things got weird this morning, I’m going to assume that your sleepover went as planned and was moderately successful? Well, successful in that you did actually spend the night there and were not reduced to doing the walk of shame without having had any shame to make it any better, as you feared.”

Belle nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty much the shape of it. You know, maybe this isn’t the best topic of conversation for the breakfast table,” she added, as she saw David coming into the diner and coming over to their usual table.

“Maybe not. We’ll reconvene later. We can have a girls’ night. You, me, Ella, Merida. Her plane comes in this afternoon and if I know her, then she’ll want to get completely wasted so that she can sleep off all the jetlag in one go.”

Belle nodded. It would be nice to meet Merida if nothing else, and Ella could always be guaranteed to lift her spirits no matter what was happening between her and Gold.

“And you know, Ella might have some kind of an insight into what’s going on. She’s Gold’s best friend after all; if anyone’s going to know what kind of hang-ups he has then it’s probably her.”

“I’m not sure I want to know about Gold’s hang-ups, if I’m honest,” David said as he joined them. “So I’m just going to pretend that I didn’t hear that sentence and start with ‘good morning, how is everyone?’”

“We’re fine thanks,” Belle said, although she knew that the brightness in her voice was painfully false and David was not convinced in the slightest. Still, he knew better than to push it and just sat down beside Mulan, ordering coffee and eggs and describing the latest arrivals to the animal shelter. A very pregnant tabby cat had been brought in overnight having been found trapped in a drain, and Belle was sad that the apartment she shared with Dorothy didn’t allow pets. That was something to think about for when she eventually moved out. A kitten would make a nice companion.

She wondered if Gold liked cats. She knew that he was a dog person, they’d had enough conversations to know that he loved dogs. She remembered one conversation that had led them onto the topic of animal reapers. Apparently there were specially trained reaper dogs responsible for making sure all other dogs – and other animals – got to heaven, and Gold had been hoping that the powers that be would assign him one for as long as he’d been reaping. It was where the legend of the graveyard grims had come from, big black shaggy dogs that carried around the aura of death with them.

The image of Gold with a reaping dog by his side made Belle smile, and it carried her through until the man himself arrived. He was the last to come into the diner; Ella had arrived and flopped down into the booth beside Belle, complaining of the heat.

“Ella, I’m pretty sure that the only reason you hate the heat is because it’s physically impossible for you to wear leather and fur during summer,” Mulan pointed out.

“It’s not physically impossible, it’s just uncomfortable,” Ella muttered. “I could still wear my fur if I so wished.”

The others just looked at her, then at each other, and went back to their breakfasts.

“If we could get back to the matter at hand here?” Gold asked, beginning to hand out post-its. “It’s a busy day today and we’re all reaping into the evening as well.”

Belle looked at her post-its; they were evenly spaced throughout the day and she smiled when she saw that her evening one was to take place in the Rabbit Hole. It wasn’t the most salubrious of venues, but it was cheap and cheerful enough, and the reapers went out to celebrate there occasionally, just as they had done after her first reap.

Mulan peered over the table at Belle’s post-its and laughed.

“Well, looks like we’ve got a destination for our girls’ night,” she said. Her post-it also showed the Rabbit Hole, at roughly the same time as Belle’s. “Ella, would you like to join us or are you otherwise engaged this evening?”

Ella looked down at her own post-its and then across at Belle’s.

“No, I think I’ll be able to make it. You know me, ladies, I’ll never turn down a G&T if one’s being offered.”

The meeting didn’t continue for all that long after that; everyone needed to get going to their various destinations in order to start their reaping day, and Belle had to get across town to the train station within the hour for her first one. She really hoped that it wasn’t going to be a suicide. She’d never had to deal with one of those before and she’d be dealing with it on her own, none of the rest of them would be available.

Still, the speculation kept her mind off the unclear situation with Gold. Maybe once they’d all got together later and talked about it, she would know where she stood a little better.

X

“You’re looking like a wet weekend,” Ella said, once Belle, Mulan and David had left the diner and Gold was on the verge of getting up and going. “What’s got into you? Yesterday you were all bright and perky and I chanced to guess that it was because you anticipated forward movement in your relationship with Belle last night. Was I incorrect in my guess?”

“Ella, I have to go now,” Gold said, getting up from the table and grabbing his cane. “We’ve all got busy days and there’s no time for idle chatter in the middle of all that.”

“There is absolutely time for idle chatter. Look, we’re going in the same direction and you know that I’m not going to stop bugging you about it until you tell me what’s going on. Belle wasn’t exactly herself either this morning; she’s not normally the staring moodily into space type.” Ella paused and looked at Gold. “You’re not staring moodily into space, you’re glaring at it.”

“That’s possibly to stop me from glaring at you, Ella,” Gold muttered. They left the diner and made their way around the corner to the bus stop; Gold had a reap at the bus station and the quickest way to get there was simply to follow the bus route and have it deliver him onto the doorstep. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to get rid of Ella that easily, so he just decided to ignore her instead, letting her plonk herself down next to him as they boarded the bus.

“All right, I have the length of this bus journey to work out what the hell’s up with you,” she said. “I shall work on the principle that something went wrong last night. You didn’t aim for the wrong hole, did you? I know you’re a century out of practice but that’s a pretty fundamental mistake.”

Gold turned on her.

“No,” he said coldly, then he sighed. Although his sex life wasn’t really something he wanted to discuss with Ella, she was his closest friend and therefore his only real option. Whilst David was a man, he also didn’t know Gold as well and whilst he’d been more than happy to give dating tips when Gold’s relationship with Belle had first begun, Gold didn’t think that he’d be too keen to continue any further. And if the worst came to the worst, then Ella could at least give him some tips, being a woman herself.

“It just wasn’t what I was expecting, and then this morning I panicked and made everything worse.”

“I’ve noticed that you do that a lot,” Ella said sagely. “I’m sure that this is nothing a good shot of whisky can’t sort out. Or a mai tai. I’ve not given up on my dream.”

“Considering the amount of trouble that drinking got you into in the past, Ella, it never fails to bemuse me how you can still offer it as a solution for everything.”

Ella sighed and stared out of the bus window before turning to him again.

“Me becoming tee-total and swearing off the demon drink now isn’t going to change how I died, Gold. You of all people know that you can’t change the past. You preach it to new reapers often enough. Even if I never touch gin again, it’s not going to change the fact that I wrapped my car around a lamppost because I was three sheets to the wind. I’ve got to live with it now, so there’s not a lot of sense in hand-wringing and regretting it. I might as well enjoy the afterlife whilst I can. We’re all reapers. None of us are going to die again, and we’re all sensible enough not to endanger the living.” She raised an eyebrow. “Anyway, we’re talking about you and Belle, not me.”

“Let’s just say that my lack of practice showed,” Gold muttered. “And then I had no idea what to say to her this morning, and she just left because the entire situation was too awkward.”

Ella was silent for a moment, digesting this, and then she gave a soft smile. “You’re such an infuriatingly adorable idiot,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m sure that it’ll all come right in the wash. This is merely a hiccup in the grander scheme of things. We’ll have to give you a remedial course in courtship. Lesson one: how to talk to a woman you had sex with last night when she’s not married to you and isn’t actually living in your house. You know, I sometimes reckon that you Victorians had it easy when it comes to sex. You never really fooled around so you never knew what you were missing. You were all having absolutely terrible sex and you were blissfully ignorant.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “Thanks Ella. That makes me feel so much better.”

Ella grinned as the bus pulled into the depot. “You love me really. Don’t worry, we’ll get you two sorted out. Considering everything that could have gone wrong, this is really just a minor blip on the surface.”

She skipped off the bus, leaving Gold to go and locate his reap. Although it hadn’t exactly been helpful, at least Ella’s pep talk had given him hope. If she didn’t think that things were that bad, then he probably shouldn’t either.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW for this chapter:** Mild gore.

The Rabbit Hole was just as it had always been. The lights were still dim, the bartender not bothering to replace the blown bulbs. The floor was still sticky with spilled drinks and various other substances, and she wondered if it had ever been cleaned within her lifetime. The pool table was where it always had been, and the drinks prices had not changed.

She didn’t know why she thought that it would be any different to the last time that she had been in here. She guessed that she was still having some trouble getting to grips with the idea that life was still going on around her as normal even though she herself had died, and that although so much upheaval had gone on in her own life, not everywhere had suffered the same fate.

“Are you ok?” Ella asked. “You’ve spaced out again. I noticed that you weren’t entirely with it this morning in the diner.”

“Just nostalgia,” Belle said. “I was remembering coming here with Ruby sometimes. I wonder if I’ll see her and Dorothy in here tonight. It shouldn’t be a problem if we do. We’ll just keep to ourselves and they’ll hopefully have fun and not be too traumatised by what’s going to happen here later.”

There were still a couple of hours to kill before the reaping time, and in such a comparatively small space, it wasn’t going to be too hard to work out who was who. The method of death was still eluding her though. There were a lot of things in a bar that could be potentially dangerous, and the patrons ranked top of the list – especially the patrons of the Rabbit Hole. She really hoped that they weren’t looking at a reap similar to Ella’s a few weeks ago, with a drunken fight turning deadly.

At least this time none of them would have to row anywhere to collect the victims’ souls, and Ella laughed when Belle voiced this thought to her.

“I have chalked that one up in my tally of ‘most interesting reaps’,” she said. “It was very amusing once I got over the indignity of having to row myself. I should have got David to come along and chauffeur me.”

“I don’t think that it’s really called chauffeuring when you’re in a boat,” Belle said, but they were prevented from any further discussion of syntax by the arrival of Mulan and a woman with a mass of bright red frizzy hair that was presumably Merida. They were both giggling, and Belle could safely say that it was the most vibrant and happiest that she had ever seen Mulan.

“Belle, this is Merida,” she said as she came over to the bar beside them, practically bouncing in her excitement. “Merida, this is our new reaper Belle, and you’ll remember Ella from the Spain trip, of course.”

“It’s good to see you, darling. How are the highlands doing?”

Merida wrinkled her nose.

“Considering the sparsity of the population where our area is, we do quite well for external influences,” she said. “But it’s so, so boring at times. Going to other places is always a bit of an adventure.”

“Well, you’re in luck today,” Ella said. “We’ve got a double reap in this very bar this evening, and we’re taking bets on what the kicker’s going to be.”

Belle and Mulan just looked at Ella, who rolled her eyes.

“All right,  _I’m_  betting on it, and everyone else is being boring as usual.”

They stayed speaking to Mulan and Merida for a while until Ella took Belle’s arm and steered her over to a free table, ostensibly to give the two girlfriends some time to themselves without a third and fourth wheel. Belle got the impression that there was a lot more that Ella wanted to say.

“So, since I know that this morning’s lapse in concentration can’t really be put down to nostalgia for a somewhat dodgy bar, and since I had a rather interesting conversation with Gold – well, it wasn’t really a conversation, it was more along the lines of me teasing him mercilessly until he gave in and divulged a few spare details – I was hoping that I could help.”

Belle sighed. “Well, things were a bit weird this morning,” she said. “Last night was great, don’t get me wrong, but this morning, everything seemed awkward. Gold didn’t really know what to do with himself and I felt that it would probably be easier for everyone involved if I just absented myself from the situation.” She paused. “I guess that he would probably do the same if he hadn’t been in his own house with nowhere to run.”

Ella nodded. “Likely. He does like running away from things sometimes. And by things I mean feelings.”

Belle laughed. “I don’t think that he’s really running away from his feelings, I’m just not sure if he knows what those feelings even are.”

“I think that one of the fundamental problems that you face is that for all Gold seems to be caught up with the modern world, he was born a hundred and fifty years ago and he’s not a big dater. He missed out on the free love movement, which was a real shame because damn, he needed to get laid around that time. Anyway, enough of that. He’s moved with the times in a lot of things, but when it comes to relationships, he’s not had any experience since before the turn of the century. The twentieth century. So I’m not surprised if he’s somewhat overwhelmed at the moment, but don’t hold that against him. He just needs educating in the ways of the modern world and how dating works.”

Belle felt heat suffuse her cheeks. “We’re a little bit past dating now.”

“Well, he needs to learn how that works as well. Let’s just say that he didn’t get a lot of encouragement from his wife in such matters.”

Belle traced a fingertip around the rim of her glass and thought back to the morning’s awkwardness. She’d had a good time last night; and she was sure that they both had. Was it really just a case that Gold had never had to deal with a morning after before and had no idea how to go about it? No, there was definitely something more at stake here.

She hadn’t come last night when they’d made love, but she hadn’t really been expecting to. It was her first time with a new partner and she knew that said new partner was a century out of practice. It was never going to be perfect, but surely Gold knew that too. Except if he didn’t, and he was worried about what she had thought of his own performance. Maybe that was why he had been reluctant to go for a second round in the morning and had fumbled over breakfast instead. It was certainly food for thought, but she was never going to get to the bottom of the problem if he wouldn’t talk to her, and she said as much to Ella.

“I would suggest tying him to a kitchen chair and not letting him up again until you’ve actually got to the bottom of it all, but that might be a bit drastic.” She spoke with air of someone who had experience of doing just that, and Belle couldn’t decide if she wanted to know more about Ella and Gold’s early reaping exploits or not.

“You speak to him in the shop often enough,” Ella said. “It doesn’t have to be an incredibly scary conversation. But I don’t think that this is the end of the world for either of you. It’s just a miscommunication because you come from very different eras. You’re never going to be able to get over that fact so you might as well embrace it and accept it. And you know, the Victorians were kinkier than everyone likes to remember. Well, not Gold, I don’t think that you could find someone less kinky than him, but you’d be surprised.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “They were so concerned about ankles that they covered their chair legs,” she pointed out.

Ella winked. “Not all of them.”

“You know, I’m not even going to ask.”

Belle glanced at her watch; time was ticking down before the reap and she should probably focus on that for a while before getting distracted by Ella again. Once the souls had been despatched, she could return to the topic of kinky Victorians.

She looked around the bar for any signs of trouble, but things seemed to be going pretty smoothly, no signs of fights breaking out on the horizon. There were a group of men by the bar showing off for Mulan and Merida with all the usual swagger of young men. Mulan and Merida weren’t at all impressed and caused the most sensational reaction when they simply started kissing each other instead, meeting with some whoops and applause from the other patrons and stunned stares from the men who had been trying to get their attention.

“Ah, the alpha male,” Ella said happily, looking over at the one who seemed to be the leader of the pack, looking particularly gobsmacked. “He really can’t understand why, when faced with such a prime specimen of the male form as himself, any self-respecting girl would choose another girl instead. Do you think I ought to go over and console him? Mind you, he’s not that handsome.”

“Well, if you do decide to help him bemoan his loss, can you find out if his name’s K. Nottingham?” Belle asked.

“I shall go and do that,” Ella said. “By the way, a graveling just kicked some empty peanut packets off that table over there. I’m sure there’s going to be some significance to that later.”

Belle looked over at the peanut packets on the floor, but there was no sign of the graveling. Ella’s sixth sense when it came to these things seemed to have paid off again.

Ella left her, going over to the bar to speak to the group of young men and see what she could glean from them. They didn’t look to be too impressed by her flirting, and Belle had to laugh at just how fearful some of them looked when confronted with Ella. She really was a force of nature, and it was wonderful to behold sometimes. She hadn’t been on all that many reaps with Ella, but she always made them more entertaining whenever she could.

After a few moments conversation at the bar, she came back over, grinning from ear to ear like the Cheshire Cat. One of the men, a greasy, weasly looking sort, wearing black leather despite the summer heat outside, was following her.

“Lacey, this is Keith,” she said. “He saw you sitting all alone down here and wondered if you would oblige him and his friend George with a game of pool.”

Belle looked at Keith, then looked at the man pointed out as George, who was still at the bar and appeared to be attempting to get Mulan and Merida to have a threesome with him. Mulan sighed, then suddenly slapped him, the action taking out his soul. Belle could see the satisfaction in her friend’s face, and smiled to herself. Keith and George were fate’s chosen victims today, and she really couldn’t say that she was at all sorry for it.

She sidled out of the booth where she and Ella had been sitting and came over to Keith, swaying her hips. She’d never usually been one for flaunting her feminine wiles before, but in this case, she thought that it would just add the icing on the cake for these two losers.

“Well, how can I turn down such a wonderful offer?” she purred. “Two for the price of one.”

She brushed past Keith, dancing her fingertips over his shoulder to pull out his soul. They’d both been reaped. Now all she had to do was play a few shots of pool and see what the gravelings had in store for them, and where on earth the peanut packets fitted in.

George came over, rubbing his jaw and grumbling about Mulan and Merida not taking him up on his generous offer, and soon the game was in full swing.

Belle had potted two balls when she felt Keith’s hand on her backside, and everything happened very quickly after that. Instinctively, she shoved her elbow back into his solar plexus, and by the time she had turned around to give him a piece of her mind, Fate was already in motion. Keith staggered backwards with the force of her blow, slipping on the shiny peanut packets just behind him. This sent him flying and there was a blood-curdling thwack as his head hit the table.

It was not just Keith that had been sent flying by the trip, though. It was also his pool cue, which managed to hit George in the side of the face and stun him enough to make him fall too – right onto his own pool cue.

For a long time, no-one in the bar moved. Keith and George’s souls stared at each other, and then down at the grim sight of their bodies on the ground.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” George said faintly.

“No you won’t,” Merida said cheerfully, slipping off her bar stool and giving George a smack on the shoulder. “You can’t throw up when you’re dead. Come on boys, I think it’s last orders for you.”

She shooed the souls towards the doors; no-one in the bar seemed to see her, too engrossed with the calamity that had just occurred.

“You know, I think that now would be the perfect time to make a judicious exit,” Ella said as voice and movement returned to the stunned bar patrons and the place descended into chaos.

Belle and Mulan nodded their agreement.

X

“Well, that was certainly one of the more gruesome reaps that I’ve seen in my time,” Ella said conversationally as she and Belle were walking along the road back in the direction of Belle’s apartment. The souls had been despatched to their lights with very little fuss, and Mulan and Merida had gone off in the other direction towards home. Belle was happy to leave them to it. It was wonderful that they had remained so close despite the distance between them, and she wished them every happiness. Now all that remained was to get to the bottom of her own relationship problems. “Although, there was that accidental beheading back in ’75; now that was certainly one for the history books.”

“You know, Ella, I really don’t think that I want to know.”

“You’re right, it’s not for the faint of heart or stomach. Onto happier and less bloodthirsty topics. Have you decided what you’re going to do about Gold?”

Belle nodded. She had considered just calling him as soon as she got back into her apartment, but she accepted that it was late and she was somewhat intoxicated, so it probably wouldn’t have been the most satisfactory of conversations.

“Excellent. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding boiling down to the fact that he hasn’t had any kind of romantic experience in something close to a geological eon and now he’s overthinking it. He does that a lot, you know, although he’s getting a lot better at hiding it. Still.” They had reached Belle’s building and stopped outside the door. “I’m sure that you’ll be able to work something out. I have every faith in you both, and if it does all go pear-shaped, I will be waiting in the wings with a baseball bat to keep you both in line. Now that Mulan’s headed towards her happy ending I’ll be damned if you and Gold don’t get yours as well.”

Belle laughed, and accepted Ella’s exuberant hug goodbye. She was a good friend to both of them, and Belle knew that whatever happened, she had Ella fighting in her corner. As she climbed the stairs to the apartment, she thought that the future was looking bright.

X

As expected, Mulan wasn’t present at the morning meeting the next day, taking advantage of her time off to spend as much time with Merida as possible. Having one reaper down meant that the rest of them were going to be busy for the next few days, but luckily fate seemed to know that they were understaffed and had not been too unkind in the amount of people who were due to meet their demises.

Ella and David left the diner quickly after receiving their post-its, and Belle knew that it was because they wanted to leave her and Gold alone together to get to the bottom of whatever needed to be got to the bottom of.

They stayed in awkward silence for a while, looking at their drinks rather than each other, and finally Belle spoke.

“About the other night,” she began, but she didn’t really have any idea where she was going to go next with the sentence.

“Yeah… I probably didn’t handle that quite as well as I should have done.” Gold gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Forget a reaper’s handbook, I think I’d be better off with a guide to life in the twenty-first century and how to navigate the perils and pitfalls of dating in it.”

“It’s all right,” Belle said. “I just didn’t really know where I stood with the whole situation.”

“Neither did I, which was part of the problem. What is the etiquette for things like that?”

“I don’t really think that there is one,” Belle said. “You just sort of take it all as it comes and work it out as you go along. There aren’t any hard and fast rules these days, which I think there were when you were last… You know. Courting.”

“Please don’t make me sound even older than I am.”

“You’re not that old, honestly. I think you need to stop being so worried about your age. We’re reapers. It’s irrelevant.”

Gold nodded. “Yes, Ella keeps telling me that.”

“Well, she does have a point.”

Gold looked around the diner. “Can we discuss this somewhere with less people?” he asked. “Maybe the shop?”

Belle nodded. “Of course.”

They settled the bill and left the diner, Belle wheeling her bike along in the direction of the shop. She was almost done with her mail round and the final couple of houses could wait a little longer for their letters.

“I guess I panicked,” Gold said once they were in the back room of the shop. It was dark and cool in there, and Belle felt that it was much more conducive to honest discussion than the crowded diner was. “I was worrying about what you were thinking.”

“I already told you that it didn’t matter,” Belle said. “It was our first time together, it was never going to be amazing. Believe me, there are definitely people out there worse than you. You just need practice, that’s all.” She smiled. “You know, I’m more than willing to help you practise.”

Gold laughed softly. “Are you sure about that?”

“You’re hardly going to get worse. So, you were worried about your prowess. There’s really no need to compare yourself to whatever anyone else might be doing. We have all the time in the world, Alistair. We can go at our own pace, whatever that might be.”

Gold nodded. “Thank you.”

She had never really thought of him as having any issues with self-esteem before, but now that she thought about it, she wondered if that was where the uncertainties had come from. He could be confident and calm in everything to do with reaping because he had so much experience of it, but when it came to other things where he had less practical knowledge, then naturally he wasn’t going to be as confident. Maybe he was thinking that since he was so long-lived and had so much experience in other fields, he ought to have more experience and more confidence in this particular area and that was why he was panicking so much.

“Don’t panic,” she said. “Maybe that should be the first rule of functional immortality as well as the first guideline for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Gold laughed, then he leaned in and kissed her, a kiss full of promise.

“Thank you,” he said. “I promise that you will not need to massage my bruised ego in the future.”

“That’s good to hear. I will not, however, be averse to massaging other things.”

Had he been drinking at that moment, Gold would probably have spat all over her, such was his stunned expression. Belle smiled. She couldn’t wait to get started on their relationship once more.


	15. Chapter 15

Belle had finished her post round and done her reaps for the day, and she was looking forward to spending the rest of the day with Mulan. Her friend had been feeling somewhat down in the dumps for the past couple of days having had to wave Merida off on a plane back to Scotland, and she was all for learning the latest juicy gossip from Belle and Gold’s relationship to take her mind off how much she was missing her own girlfriend.

Fate, however, had conspired to make their afternoon into something of an adventure.

Belle had just sat down in the diner with a cup of tea and a very large piece of chocolate cake when her phone buzzed with the arrival of a message. She was surprised to see that it was from David; he wasn’t in the habit of sending her messages out of the blue.

_Are you free?_

Belle raised an eyebrow.

_I’m meant to be having cake and girl talk with Mulan but yes, I’m not at work or reaping right now._

Before she received a reply, Mulan slid into the booth opposite her.

“I’ve just had a message from David,” Mulan said without any pre-emptory hello. “I think something’s gone wrong with his reap.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, I’ve had the same. I think it’s either a reap gone wrong or he’s attempting to plan a surprise birthday party for Gold. Or a deathday party.”

Mulan just looked at her. “A deathday party?”

“You know. Like a birthday party but celebrating the day you died instead. Haven’t you read Harry Potter?”

Mulan just rubbed her forehead. “Right. At any rate, I don’t think that David is planning a surprise deathday party for Gold. Seriously? A deathday party?”

“All right, all right, it was just a suggestion. Hang on, we might get some more information now.”

Belle’s phone was ringing, showing David as the caller, and she picked up.

“Hi David. Mulan and I were just discussing what might be going on. Are you planning a surprise party for Gold?”

_“What? No! It’s my reap. I need some help.”_

“What kind of help? If you’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder then I think you’re going to have to call Gold to get you out of that one.”

_“Do you really think that I’d still be texting and calling you from my own phone if I’d been arrested? No, I can’t get her to move on to her lights and I really need to get to work; I can’t exactly take her with me.”_

“Why not?” Mulan asked. She was leaning over the table so as to be able to hear the conversation without Belle having to put it on speakerphone and disturb the rest of the diner patrons with their strange conversation – not that they didn’t disturb the rest of the patrons with their post-it handout chatter on a regular basis. “I think that’s a great idea. ‘Bring your reap to work day’. It would make life very interesting.”

_“No, Mulan,”_  David said flatly.  _“Anyway, I was hoping that I could beg a favour of you two and get you to babysit her for a few hours? And maybe get her to her lights if you can?”_

Mulan and Belle looked at each other. Reapers were supposed to keep an eye on all the souls that they pulled, but once the soul was out of the body, it didn’t really matter who took them from there. Belle looked down at her chocolate cake and sighed.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll help you out. Bring her by the diner and we’ll take it from there; I’m not giving up this cake.”

_“Thanks Belle, you’re a star. I owe you one.”_

“You can buy us more cake,” Mulan said.

They said their goodbyes and hung up, and Belle returned to the cake. She was determined to enjoy it even if she was going to have to babysit a recalcitrant soul all afternoon. Mulan ordered her own dessert and they ate contemplatively for a while as they waited for David.

“What do you think’s gone wrong?” Belle asked presently. “I know I’ve not been here all that long, but I’ve never known David have this much trouble with a reap before.”

“I don’t know,” Mulan said. “The ones you usually have the most trouble with are the ones that don’t realise they’re dead, or sometimes the ones that are determined to attend their own funerals. They can be tricky to get rid of.” She paused. “There was a reaper in New York who used to use her souls to set up a fake medium business and con the families.”

Belle grimaced. “Really?”

“Yes. Needless to say, the powers that be weren’t too impressed by this. Anyway, here comes David.”

David rounded the corner outside the diner and a moment later, he was leading a woman across towards their booth.

“Mrs Bloom, these are my colleagues Mulan and Belle, they’ll take you from here. Thank you so much, you too, you’re lifesavers.”

“Well, not exactly,” Mulan said. “In fact we’re sort of the opposite.”

David gave her an unimpressed look.

“Thanks anyway. And, I trust that you won’t mention it to Gold?”

Mulan nodded. “Your difficulties are safe with us, David. Now, those dogs won’t feed themselves.”

David sped out of the diner again and Belle took a moment to look at Mrs Bloom. There was nothing in her physical appearance to show what was preventing her from moving on. She seemed nervous, looking around the diner with darting eyes, her shoulders hunched as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

“Now then, Mrs Bloom,” Mulan began, “don’t you think that you’d be more comfortable moving on to your lights rather than staying here?”

The soul shook her head.

“Not until I know who murdered me,” she said.

Mulan and Belle looked at each other again. David had failed to mention that particular fact.

“You were murdered?” Belle asked. “Are you sure?” Gold and Ella had told her various stories of the odd reap where the soul had been convinced that their reaper had in fact killed them.

Mrs Bloom shot her a withering look.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “I know it wasn’t that young man who brought me here, if that’s what you’re thinking. Someone shot me.”

Mulan nodded. “Well, that would certainly do it. Do you have any enemies that you know of?”

“No! That’s what makes it all so strange!”

“Maybe it wasn’t cold-blooded murder then,” Mulan suggested. “Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve had that before with jewellery store hold-ups. They’re always tricky to clean up after”

“This wasn’t a jewellery store robbery!” Mrs Bloom exclaimed. “I was just walking down the street minding my own business! I was about two blocks from home!”

Belle reached across and patted the woman’s hand. It was clear that she wasn’t trying to be annoying on purpose; she was genuinely extremely shaken from her experience, and that was why Belle was certain that it would be better to get her to move on sooner rather than later.

“I’m sure that the police will find whoever was responsible,” she said. “If you just let them do their job, then they’ll find justice for you. It’s not going to change where you’re going, and whoever did this, they’re not going to be there. It’s over for you now. You can move on.”

“But I need to know,” Mrs Bloom pleaded. “How can you expect me to move on without knowing who or why? I mean, I’m a ghost now, right? Isn’t there that whole thing with unfinished business? Knowing who murdered me is my unfinished business. It’s about as unfinished as you can get.”

“All right,” Mulan said. “We’ll see what we can do. Maybe returning to the scene of the crime with a fresh set of eyes will help us.”

“Thank you.” Mrs Bloom sounded almost worshipfully grateful. “I just want to know. I don’t know why I can’t. Surely it makes a difference. How can it not?”

Belle and Mulan finished eating and they left the diner, walking along towards the place where Mrs Bloom had been killed.

“Murders are always tricky,” Mulan said. “You never really know what’s happened. They’re always hardest to get people to move on from, and I can understand why. It’s not going to make any difference to their afterlife. Once they get their lights then it won’t matter to them, but they don’t know that. If I didn’t know who had killed me, I would want to know. I can sympathise completely, but it doesn’t make our jobs any easier.”

“I guess that it’s just all part of the job,” Belle mused. “We’re here to help people pass on. If that means that we have to go above and beyond the call of duty a few times, then so be it. It’s not for us to judge what is and isn’t trivial to these people, what is and isn’t important in their own lives.”

Mulan gave her a look of admiration. “You know, you’ve become a lot more philosophical in the last few weeks,” she said. “I think that Gold’s rubbing off on you.”

Belle coughed and changed the subject, window shopping as they went along the street.

It was easy to find the place where David’s reap had taken place; there was crime scene tape everywhere and the place was swarming with police officers. There was no sign of the body and Belle was glad of it. She knew how shocking it had been to see her own body when she had been reaped and she didn’t want to make things any worse for Mrs Bloom.

Mulan went over to one of the police officers, asking for information about what was going on, and Belle was left with the stranded soul.

“So what do you remember?” she asked.

“Not a lot. I was just walking down the street. Someone shouted, I think I remember someone calling my name and I thought that was odd. I looked around and then the next thing I knew, I was twenty feet away and David was ushering me away from the scene. I wanted to stay, I wanted to see what happened, but then the police started arriving and people started gathering around like locusts; it was hard to see what was going on.”

“It’s all very strange,” Belle agreed. “You definitely heard someone call your name?” That would put paid to Mulan’s theory of Mrs Bloom simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I’m sure of it. I’m sure that someone called Amelia from across the street.”

“Man or woman?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember. I think it was a woman, now that I think about it.”

Well that sort of narrowed it down very slightly. Belle steered Mrs Bloom away from the crime scene as Mulan finished up with the officer and jogged back over to them.

“You know, Mrs Bloom,” Belle began, “are you sure that you want to go ahead with this? It might open up a whole line of enquiry that you weren’t expecting and that might not be the best thing to help you move on. What if when you find out who killed you, you don’t like what you find?”

“I’m hardly likely to like the person that murdered me,” Mrs Bloom snapped.

“No, I mean that it might come as a shock to you. Statistically, most people are murdered by someone they know.”

Mrs Bloom gasped. “What if it was someone from the book club!”

“Does anyone at the book club have any reason to shoot you?” Mulan asked. “The police are talking to eyewitnesses but they don’t have a lot to go on. It’s a quiet stretch of road, no CCTV. It was a drive-by and no-one can seem to identify the car.”

“I just don’t know who would want to shoot me!” Mrs Bloom exclaimed. “I need to know!”

Belle was torn. On the one hand she could sympathise. On the other, this case seemed to be turning into one that was getting more and more complicated with every new thing that they found out about it and the longer that Mrs Bloom spent on this earth trying to get to the bottom of it, the harder it was going to be to get her to move on. They were definitely looking at a pre-meditated murder now, all the signs added up.

“You know, I think we might need back-up on this one,” Mulan said. “I know I’ve been reaping for ten years, but I’ve never come across one like this before. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

It was actually quite reassuring to learn that Mulan had no idea what she was doing either. Belle knew that she and David could be forgiven for floundering given their comparative reaping youth, but the fact that the older reaper was baffled as well made her feel less at a loss.

Mulan pulled out her phone and dialled Ella.

“Hi Ella. It’s all hands on deck for this one I’m afraid. Yeah, don’t tell Gold…”

About fifteen minutes later found them all back in the diner, including Mrs Bloom. Ella took one look at the three of them and changed her coffee order to a Bloody Mary.

“Right,” she said. “I think I know what we’re dealing with here.” She studied Mrs Bloom hard. “Now, I’m sure that they’ve already asked you if you have any enemies and I’m sure that the answer will have been no. So I’m going to ask you if anything suspicious has been happening in the few weeks leading up to your death. You know, I think that Poirot and Marple and all their contemporaries would have got on with solving their crimes a lot better if they’d actually been able to chat to the murder victims like this. We could make a fortune offering our services out to the police and the FBI. Begin at the beginning, my dear, and spare no details.”

As Mrs Bloom continued to talk, Belle began to get a picture of what had occurred, and it wasn’t a very pretty one. She wondered whether Mrs Bloom would make the connection herself, and what would happen if and when she did. 

She saw the moment the penny dropped, and she was very glad that the rest of the people in the diner couldn’t hear or see the souls because the shriek of outrage that came from Mrs Bloom would probably have caused permanent hearing damage to everyone in the vicinity.

“Where’s that good-for-nothing scumbag of a husband of mine!” she screamed. “I’ll, I’ll, I’ll…”

Realisation dawned that no matter where her husband, the ultimate orchestrator of her demise, was, she could not do anything to him.

“Now do you see why it’s sometimes best not to know?” Ella said gently. “Come on. I think it’s time that we went and found your lights now that you know what happened.”

“Are you mad?” Mrs Bloom was practically foaming at the mouth with rage. “I’m not leaving now! I’m going to haunt him for the rest of his days! He’ll be sorry!”

Mulan shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “You’re not a ghost. You can’t haunt anyone. You’re just a soul that’s looking for peace, and you’re not going to find it here. Staying will only make matters worse, I promise you.”

Finally, Mrs Bloom deflated, nodding sadly.

“It’s much better wherever you’re going, honestly,” Ella said, taking her unresisting arm and leading her out of the diner. When she returned a few minutes she was alone, and as she slid back into the booth, she groaned.

“I hate the complicated murders,” she grumbled. “I think we all deserve Bloody Marys after that. Between shouting at Gold for being an idiot and now this, I’m tempted to pack it in altogether and retire to the Bahamas.”

Mulan laughed as she went to get the drinks in. “You’d miss us too much, Ella.”

“Unfortunately, you are correct.”

Belle couldn’t help but wonder what she’d been shouting at Gold for.

X

Gold was in the back room of the shop working on some fake tax returns for Ella and quickly coming to the conclusion that he was either going to have to stop doing that or stop thinking about several other things at the same time, because he’d had to start again three times thanks to making too many mistakes, and Ella wasn’t going to be very happy with him if her tax bill doubled by accident.

He was thinking of an encounter with a reaper that he’d had a long time ago, back before he had come to America, back when he was still trying to keep tabs on his family. It was just before he met Ella; indeed, Ella had been Isaac’s last reap and Gold had been one of the team who had welcomed her into the afterlife and the world of reaping.

Isaac had been the one who was always sent after Gold when he tried to sneak off and see his son, and he had given Gold a piece of advice that would remain forgotten in the back of his mind until now.

_“Reapers’ families are touched by death_ ,” he had said.  _“As soon as there’s a reaper in the family, those that are still living become closer to the veil, and sometimes, down the line, they can see through it. That’s where psychics and mediums come from.”_

_“I thought that psychics and mediums were all phoneys,”_  Gold had replied.

_“Oh, most of them are, but not all of them. And for those who really do have the gift, then you can be sure that one of their ancestors ended up as a reaper.”_

Gold was thinking once more of Henry. Now that he had more definite proof that Henry could see Belle’s true face, he had to wonder. Could it be that death had touched Henry’s family in the past, and now he could see through the veil a little? Could it be that one of Henry’s ancestors had become a reaper?

Gold had been reaping in Storybrooke for a comparatively long time and he knew a lot of reapers. It was perfectly plausible that he might know the person from whom Henry was descended, except Henry had been given up for adoption at birth and nothing was known about his biological family.

It was a puzzle, and not exactly one that Gold could delve too far into, but he liked to think that he had at least come to a satisfactory conclusion as to Henry’s abilities. They might never know where they stemmed from, but at least part of the mystery was solved.

He set the papers to one side and came out into the shop proper, looking around at all the artefacts that he had gathered over the years, thinking back along the long, long afterlife that he’d had, and he sighed. Over a hundred years reaping and Belle was just getting started on her journey. She had to know that he would move on sooner than she would, and she still wanted to pursue their relationship as fully as if they had both had centuries ahead of them.

Perhaps in another situation he would have done something. He had been considering breaking it off before now, telling Belle that she had so much time ahead of her and so much love to give that she really shouldn’t be wasting it on someone who might be pulled off into the great unknown at any moment, but thanks to some forcible reminders from an exasperated Ella, he had finally accepted that it was not his decision to make.

“Gold, if you do this, I will not speak to you again for the rest of your however long you might have on this earth,” Ella had said in no uncertain terms when he had told her of his worries. “You have absolutely no right to take that decision out of Belle’s hands and to take it upon yourself to make both of you miserable just because you think it’s for the best. You’re very good at self-sabotaging and I am determined that you’re not going to do it this time.”

The bell above the shop door chimed and Gold was pulled from his reverie as the object of his thoughts entered, a bright smile on her face, and she came over to greet him with a kiss.

“Well, that was certainly an eventful day,” she said. “If I ever say that the afterlife’s boring, just tell me ‘Mrs Bloom’ and I’ll shut up.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “Bloom was David’s reap.”

“That doesn’t mean that I can’t have had a little adventure with her too.” Belle grinned and slipped her arms around his neck, stealing another kiss that he readily gave her. “What have you been up to today whilst I’ve been playing detective?”

Gold shook his head. “Nothing much. Diddling the American tax system and being shouted at by Ella, all par for the course really.”

“Yes, Ella mentioned she’d been shouting at you. Do I even want to know why?”

“Probably not.” He wondered how to broach the subject with her and whether he even should. “Belle… you know that I’ve been reaping for over a hundred years.”

Belle sighed. “I thought we’d already established that the age difference here is something of a moot point.”

“I know. It’s not that. It’s just that I’ll be getting my lights soon. I think. I don’t know when they’re coming but they’ll be coming a lot sooner than yours.”

Belle shrugged. “So? You think I don’t know that? I can do basic maths, Alistair. I know that you’re going to move on before me. But dying kind of changed my perspective when it comes to making long-term plans. For now, we’re both here. Why don’t we enjoy that?”

Gold laughed, and leaned in for another kiss.

“You’re quite possibly the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met, Belle.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.”

Gold pushed his doubts to the back of his mind. This was something that he absolutely did not want to jeopardise.


	16. Chapter 16

Belle had been quite glad of a streak of uncomplicated reaps after the problems that they’d all had with Mrs Bloom, but she knew that this wouldn’t last. Something was going to happen to throw her off course sooner or later and she’d been carrying around the foreboding feeling for the past week.

Matters hadn’t really been helped by the fact that Ruby kept spending more and more time over at the apartment with Dorothy, meaning that Belle had to make herself scarce for fear of making things awkward. Dorothy had asked why she was always out lately and Belle had given the excuse of wanting her and her girlfriend to have as much uninterrupted alone time as possible since their working patterns meant they couldn’t really date during traditional dating hours. She couldn’t exactly admit to Dorothy that she had known Ruby in a previous life and was therefore terrified of freaking her girlfriend out by letting slip facts and memories about her that an ostensible stranger should never have known.

Mulan had been more than happy to give her shelter when she needed it, and she’d ended up going over to Gold’s a lot more frequently, which she couldn’t say she was entirely sorry about. She smiled to herself as she parked her bicycle outside the diner and made her way inside; everyone else was already there. In a way, she should probably thank Ruby and Dorothy for giving her an excuse to stay over with Gold a lot more. He was still a little shy and awkward in the bedroom, but his confidence was definitely improving in leaps and bounds.

David raised an eyebrow as Belle slid into the booth beside him and Gold started distributing post-its.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’ve got a sly little grin on your face, like you know a terrific secret that the rest of us don’t. I’ve seen it before on Gold, and it looks like you’ve inherited it from him.”

Belle felt the colour rise in her cheeks, taking a look at the other people seated around the table. Mulan and Ella both gave her knowing looks; Gold was too busy with his filofax and post-its to pay David’s remark any attention.

Their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret - since Ella, Mulan and David had practically been cheering them on for the entire time that they had been dancing around each other and had almost jumped for joy when they finally started dating. All the same, they tried not to be too demonstrative about it when the entire group was all together, for fear of a situation like this one arising.

“All right, all right, let’s have no more discussion of each other’s personal lives and whatever secrets they may or may not be guarding around the breakfast table, thank you.” Gold had finished distributing the days’ post-its.

Ella looked down at hers and frowned. “I swear I reaped this one last month, are you sure you’re not getting your list mixed up?”

“I believe it’s a cousin. You know, one of those sprawling families with strange naming conventions.” Gold didn’t look up and Ella considered her post-it again.

“Strange having two of them on the same street. Shame I don’t keep my post-its, or I could compare. Someone out there with a scientific mind has probably run some statistics on these things.”

“It’s the kind of thing that Jefferson would have done,” David mused. “Or Archie. He was my mentor back in California when I was first reaped. He had all kinds of theories about how fate had it in for certain families.”

Belle left David and Ella to their conversation and looked down at her post-it. The happy mood that she had entered the diner in faded as she saw what it was.

_H. Riley, Jacksons’ Corner, ETD 9:48 AM._

Of all the places, why did it have to be that one?

“Belle?” Mulan’s face was concerned as Belle looked up. “Is everything ok?”

Belle nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m all right. Just need to…” She trailed off, not really knowing exactly what it was that she needed. Mulan gave her a look, but didn’t push her any further.

“Well, I’d better be getting going, my reap’s on the other side of the town and it’s going to be busy at this time of a morning. Let me know if you need anything, ok?”

Belle didn’t really hear her, just staring at her post-it again. She hung back after everyone else had left the diner, and Gold looked at her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s my reap,” Belle began, and Gold’s brow furrowed.

“Do you know the person?” he asked.

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just… it’s very near to where I died myself, and I don’t know whether I’ll be strong enough to see another death there on my own. You know what happened the last time that I had a reap that was like my own death. I don’t want the same thing to happen again. Would you mind coming with me, please?”

Gold smiled. “I would be happy to.”

There wasn’t a lot of time to waste before the reap, it was only an hour away, and they left the diner together, Belle pushing her bicycle along. The mail deliveries to the west part of the town would have to wait a while until her reap was done; she was too nervous to try and focus on anything important that required brainpower - like reading addresses correctly.

There were building works going on at Jacksons’ Corner, and as she left her bike at a safe distance and stood on the street with Gold, looking for clues as to what might happen next, Belle began to think that perhaps her reap today wouldn’t be a car accident after all. That didn’t mean that someone wasn’t still going to die a horrible death, but at least they weren’t as likely to die in the same way that she had done.

This part of the road played host to some old buildings that had long-since been converted into flats and now seemed to be in the process of being converted again into something else. There were cranes and skips set up everywhere, and Belle was becoming ever more convinced that she was going to be looking at death by falling debris.

“Graveling,” Gold muttered to her.

“Where?”

“On the crane.”

Belle looked away from the crane so that it was only in the very corner of her peripheral vision, and she caught a glimpse of the ugly creature, dancing around on top of the crane arm. Yes, they were definitely looking at someone being squashed by something falling from a crane. The only difficulty now would be working out who. There were still a few minutes before the reap was due, and the crane was not currently lifting anything. The builders in the upper storeys were waiting to hook it up to something to take out of the top storey.

As fascinated as she was to find out exactly what was going to get dropped, Belle tore her eyes away from the workers and down towards the street level below. Most people were sensibly hurrying around the bottom of the cranes, giving the construction work a wide berth, but evidently, H. Riley was not going to be so lucky.

Belle crossed the road, hanging around on the corner just at a safe distance from the range of possibly falling debris, and she kept a lookout for susceptible people.

Her reap revealed himself only a moment later as a man in a sharp suit carrying a briefcase and looking extremely self-important came around the corner at a fair clip, stopping in his tracks when his phone began to ring.

“This is Riley,” he answered.

“Hey! Buddy!” One of the workers was yelling from the top storey. “Move along! You’re right under the crane!”

Riley took no notice, dropping his briefcase and covering his ear with his other hand so that he could hear his no doubt incredibly important phone conversation better. Belle wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but she certainly didn’t envy the tongue-lashing that they were getting. She moved past him, brushing her hand against his arm to take his soul as she went, then making her way back over to Gold.

“And now, we wait,” she said.

Things happened quite quickly after that. There was another yell from the workman on the top storey, and then an extremely musical crash as a baby grand piano was pulled out of the building by the crane, snapped its cables, and came straight down on top of Mr Riley.

Belle blinked. She couldn’t believe it. Of all the ways to go, she honestly never thought that she would ever see a falling piano.

“Hello? Hello? Are you even listening to me, Simpkins? I told you already, Spencer agreeing to a deal like that is about as likely as a piano dropping out of the sky!”

Mr Riley’s soul had appeared beside them, speaking into a phone that he was no longer holding. It took him a moment to realise what had happened. Looking over at the piano, he became suddenly speechless, apart from one whispered word.

“Oh.”

X

“I can’t believe we actually had a falling piano,” Belle said, once Riley had been safely taken up by his lights. “Ella’s going to be devastated that she missed it.”

“I think it might be best not to tell her,” Gold mused. “She’s not prone to terrible fits of jealousy as far as I know, but you’ve seen first-hand how dramatic she can be. We’d never hear the end of it. She’d probably start stalking all our reaps in the hope of finding another one.”

Belle laughed. “As hilarious as that sounds, it’s probably not a good idea. We’ll keep it between ourselves for now.”

They walked back to where Belle had left her bike, and Gold paused.

“Do you think that the mail can wait a little while longer?” he asked. There was a pensiveness to him that Belle had not known before, and it made her wonder what was going on.

“Sure,” she said. “It’s late already, another hour won’t make all that much of a difference.”

“Thank you. Shall we get coffee? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “Ok. Should I be worried? That sort of statement usually precedes an awkward conversation about where a relationship is going.”

Gold shook his head with a small smile, and they set off in the direction of the nearest coffee shop.

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s not about us. Well, it is about us in a way, but it’s not really.”

“You’re really not helping, Alistair.”

“Let’s just get coffee and sit down somewhere first.”

It was a bright and warm day, so they got their drinks to go and wandered into the park to sit down on a shaded bench to drink. Gold remained silent for a little while, then finally began to say his piece.

“Belle, I’d like to tell you about how I died. I think that since we’re doing this, us, being together, I think that you have the right to know. I know how you died, after all.”

Belle smiled, closing her hand over Gold’s where it rested on the bench between them.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m honoured that you trust me enough to tell me. I know that not everyone knows.”

“No, Ella’s the only person whom I’ve told. Everyone else who was around for my death has since moved on to their lights. Like anyone, I don’t like to relive it, and I’m lucky that it’s unlikely I’ll ever have a similar reap.”

“Yes, Ella said that when I reaped my first car accident,” Belle said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. These things are always painful. Believe me, I know.”

“I know. But I do want you to know. I think it’s important for you to know.”

Belle nodded. “Ok. Are you happy here, or do you want to go somewhere else?”

“No, here’s good. I’d rather be here, outside in the sunshine. It makes everything seem less bleak, you know. I love my shop and I feel safe there, but it’s a bit brooding and menacing, and not really the place for stories of my death.”

Belle had never really thought of the shop as menacing before, but she did have to agree that it was rather dark and mysterious, and a far sight removed from the bright summer sun that they were now sitting in.

“I died in 1916,” Gold began. “You probably know what was going on at the time.”

Belle nodded. “The First World War. Were you killed in combat?”

Gold shook his head. “No, I never saw combat in that particular war.” He tapped his cane against the bench. “I was exempt from service, physically unfit.”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Belle said. “I didn’t want to pry, but I would have thought that your injuries would have healed after you died.”

“Not completely. It doesn’t cause me pain, but I’ve become so used to it that I can’t balance properly without the cane. It’s muscle memory more than anything.” Gold sighed. “I didn’t fight in the First World War. I had, however, fought in the Boer War, and that was where I received my injury. It was also where I received what’s now recognised as post-traumatic stress disorder but was then just known as cowardice.”

Belle remembered what Ella had told her about Gold’s complicated relationship with cowardice, and she squeezed his hand.

“I had a son,” Gold said quietly. “He turned eighteen in 1916. That was also the year that conscription came into force. Every able-bodied man aged eighteen and over was called up for the army. I was determined that Baeden wouldn’t suffer the same things that I had done. We’d seen the young men coming back from the front with even more horrific injuries than I had suffered, we’d seen them suffering with shell-shock just as I did, and I couldn’t let Bae go through those things. I might have been a coward in society’s eyes, but I wasn’t going to let my son die for his country. I wasn’t going to let him die full stop. So when the army recruiters came around to round up the conscripts, I kept Bae hidden.”

Gold gave a sad smile. “He wanted to fight. He said that hiding away was cowardly and that he would be proud. I couldn’t make him see that there was nothing noble in dying in a strange land for generals back in London who would never see the front lines.”

“We were a small village,” he continued. “There weren’t many young men, and the recruiting officers were determined to find as many soldiers as they could. They knew Bae was there.”

He tailed off, and Belle looked over at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring out into the middle distance, eyes unseeing as he relived the moment again.

“What happened?” she asked softly.

“They weren’t going to get him,” Gold said simply. “I might have been the village coward, but I would have done anything to protect my son. He was all I had left. My wife had left me and Bae not long after I got back from fighting and I couldn’t lose the only other person I had left. I got between them and him, and nothing would make me move. Well, nothing except the fact army officers always carry pistols.”

He brought his hand to his heart, closing his eyes.

“That’s awful,” Belle whispered. “What happened to Bae?”

“Well, I had to watch as a soul whilst they dragged him away from my body, and then I was off being inducted into reaping. It was a grim time, the middle of a war, so much death around. Even in external influences, we were all rushed off our feet. It took me a little while to find him again after he’d been sent to the front, but he was all right.” Gold smiled. “He survived. He came home from the war when it ended, found his childhood sweetheart again and married her… I kept an eye on the family until I left for America during the thirties. I had one of the Scottish reapers keep an eye on him for me after that, after war broke out again.” Gold sighed. “I’ve lived through so many wars. Well, not exactly  _lived_ , but you know what I mean. If there’s one disadvantage to our longevity, you get to see people making the same mistakes over and over again, and all we can do is just help along the victims.”

Belle squeezed his hand. “What about Bae? Was he all right?”

“Yes. He worked designing planes, so he wasn’t called up for military service again, and he lived a long and happy life before he got his lights at the respectable age of eighty-eight, with two children and six grandchildren.”

“I’m very glad to hear it. I mean, it’s horrible that you were separated from him and you didn’t get to see him grow up, but I’m glad that your death wasn’t in vain and that he got to live a full life in spite of everything.”

Gold nodded. “Yes. I will be forever grateful for that. I like to think that the powers that be had seen my own death and decided that fate wasn’t going to intervene for Bae until the last possible moment.” He paused. “As far as I know, his family still live over in Scotland. I’ve sometimes been tempted to look them up and see how they’re getting on, but you know as well as I do the dangers of dwelling on the past, and I can’t exactly preach to my reapers and then go and do the exact opposite.”

Belle smiled. “It’s probably best not to know,” she agreed. “You’ll only torture yourself thinking about what could have been.”

“Precisely. That’s one of the reasons why I came over to America with Ella. We wanted to avoid temptation. It’s the same reason that David came to us from the reapers in California. I know that my son was safe and happy, and that’s all that matters.”

The two of them stayed in companionable silence for a while as they finished their coffee.

“Thank you for confiding in me,” Belle said. “It’s good to know your story.”

“You’re very welcome. I should probably let you get back to your rounds if the mail stands any chance of being delivered today.”

Belle just laughed. “I don’t think they’ll mind if I’m a little tardy one day. They’re used to my strange habits at the post office by now. Taking time out of mail deliveries and purposefully delivering things to the wrong house in order to get reaps in doesn’t go unnoticed. No-one’s said anything yet though. The mail service is a law unto itself.”

“All the same, there are people waiting for their letters. Will you come to the diner again this evening? I believe that David has mooted a team get-together that doesn’t involve post-its being handed out over breakfast foods.”

Belle nodded. “Of course. I’ll see you later.”

X

Belle and Gold had been sitting in the diner with David for all of five minutes when it became clear that there would be no more peace for the rest of the evening.

“Alistair Gold!”

Belle and Gold exchanged a look as Ella rushed into the diner in an angry cloud of Gucci perfume. At least the weather was such that even Ella couldn’t get away with wearing her furs.

“I think she might have found out about the falling piano,” Gold murmured. Ella stalked over to their table, glaring at him.

“Gold, I have it on good authority that there was a falling piano in town earlier and you were there to witness it and I was not.”

Gold spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “As I always say, Ella, I have no idea what the reaps are going to be when I assign them out. I had no prior knowledge that there would be a piano in the vicinity.”

“It’s my fault, Ella,” Belle said. “It was my reap; I was worried that it was going to be another one like my own death so I asked Gold to come along for moral support.”

The wind seemed to go out of Ella’s sails somewhat after that and she sat down in the booth next to Belle.

“Still,” she said, feathers still somewhat ruffled. “You could at least have taken pictures.”

“That would have been both incredibly morbid and in incredibly poor taste,” Gold pointed out. “I am sure that there is more than one falling piano in the world, and the law of probabilities states that since we’ll be hanging around in the world for a lot longer than some other people, you chance to reap a piano will come.”

David, who had been watching the exchange with undisguised amusement and trying not to laugh, shrugged.

“It’s always good to have moral support for these kinds of reaps,” he said. “At least I know that I’m very unlikely to ever have to reap someone who’s been killed by an exploding lawnmower.”

Belle and Ella looked at him, then at each other, then at Gold, who just shrugged.

“I don’t know what you’re looking at me for. I didn’t reap him.”

“An exploding lawnmower?” Ella asked faintly. “You know what, we’ll just leave it at that. The weird deaths are always best left unexplained.”

Mulan arrived at that point and the talk turned away from the morbid and towards the living, into happier territory. All through the meal, Belle kept stealing little glances at Gold, and he kept smiling back at her. Learning about his death felt like turning a corner in their relationship, adding in a new layer of trust and intimacy between them and cementing their status as fully committed to each other.

Belle was more than happy with that.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NB:** Named character death this chapter. All the other reaps have been inconsequential OCs, today’s isn’t.

There was a lull in the breakfast bustle at Granny’s, and Belle and Gold were happily ensconced in their usual booth, taking their time over their waffles and people watching. Belle had found that since becoming a reaper, she spent far more time observing the living than she had ever done whilst she had been among their number herself. Now that they were on that plane of existence that was slightly apart, observation skills were a must in order to help them identify their reaps.

The fact that people-watching was an interesting pastime helped. Gold had been doing it for so long that he had a wealth of stories of things that he had witnessed over the years, and Belle never tired of hearing them no matter how much Gold protested that he was probably boring her.

“They’re going through a rocky patch,” Gold muttered, nodding towards a couple in a booth opposite them. Belle looked at the two carefully, taking in their stiff body language and the too-wide false smiles that they gave their waitress as she came over with their breakfast order. As soon as she had gone, they continued their conversation in whispers and hisses that could not be overheard, their meals completely forgotten, untouched in front of them.

“It’s a terrible waste of pancakes,” Gold said. “If Ella was here, she’d be going over and asking if she could have them.”

Belle laughed, finishing up the final mouthful of her waffles. Despite the need for the reapers to keep a low profile and avoid attracting too much attention to themselves, Ella’s knack for being completely outrageous and socially unacceptable was one of the things that Belle had grown to love about her. Her antics always made the days brighter, and Belle was sure that was why she did it, to lighten the load of the younger reapers who were not quite as used to their undead state yet.

It was a quiet day for the gravelings and Belle did not have any post-its, nor did she have any actual post to deliver. The day stretched before her without anything to fill it, and she was looking forward to spending the time with Gold. Things were going along very nicely between them, and she was very happy with the way that they had relaxed into being in a relationship. There was no pressure to try and conform to the romantic standards of the living anymore; they would do this in their own way and at their own pace.

“I ought to head off if I’m going to intercept P. Dobson in time to prevent their soul from undergoing something nasty during their demise,” Gold said presently, pushing his empty plate to the side and getting out of the booth. “You’re welcome to accompany me if you wish.”

Belle shook her head. “No. It’s quite nice to have a day without any death clouding it over. I’m going to stay here for a while and see what happens with couple of the century over there.”

Gold just chuckled.

“What? It’s better than TV in here most of the time.”

“I wholeheartedly agree with you. I’ll come back here after dealing with P. Dobson. I think that the shop can live without me for the day.”

“Are you suggesting that we do something spontaneous, Alistair?” Belle asked, pretending to be scandalised.

“I think that something spontaneous might do me good once in a while.”

He kissed her cheek in farewell, the gesture making Belle smile, and she settled back in the booth, watching the couple opposite. They had actually made a start on their breakfasts now, although they were wildly gesticulating with food laden forks. It was a good thing that Belle knew there were no post-its scheduled for the diner this morning, because she could definitely see the Rube Goldberg device building itself, and the long and tenuous chain of events that would have, in any other circumstances, led to an unexpected and sudden demise.

Thankfully, there were no flying cutlery or foodstuffs, and the couple calmed down. Belle accepted a coffee refill and sat back, thinking of things that she and Gold could do during their day off. Just normal couple things would be enough. A trip to the cinema maybe, or going to feed the ducks on the river. Something whimsical and far away from the lives they led.

“Hey Belle. Do you mind if I join you?”

Belle was pulled out of her daydream and looked up to see Graham standing beside the booth.

“Not at all, take a seat.”

He slid into the booth gratefully and Granny brought over the coffee pot again.

“Is everything ok, Graham?” Belle asked. “We don’t usually see you in here at this time of a morning. Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Graham nodded. “Yes, I’m on my way there now, but I wanted to come and talk to you first.”

Belle’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s about my post-it,” Graham said. “I’m really sorry, Belle, there’s no easy way to tell you this but it would be cruel not to let you know.”

He grabbed the post-it - green this time, unlike the yellow ones that Gold used when he was handing out reaps - out of his jeans pocket and slid it across the table towards Belle.

Her breath caught in her throat when she read it.

_M. French. ETD 11:56 AM. Storybrooke General Hospital ER._

In just a single second, her plans for a day free from death and grief were turned on their head.

“No-one ever has to reap their friends or family,” Graham said. “But it’s courteous to let your fellow reapers know if their loved ones are on a post-it.”

Belle nodded, unable to speak. She pressed her hands over her mouth, trying desperately to stop the wail of anguish that threatened to escape her at any moment. Her father was going to die today, and there was nothing that she could do to prevent that.

“Hey, it’s ok,” Graham said. “This reaction is perfectly normal.” He reached across the table and gently took her arm, squeezing lightly. “I’ll take good care of him, I promise, and no matter what happens, he won’t feel a thing.”

Belle nodded, she had been reaping long enough now to know that, and she remembered her own death even more acutely now than she had done before.

“I thought that since you two never had a chance to say goodbye before you were taken, you might want that closure now.”

Belle shook her head. “He won’t know me, he won’t know my true face,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“He will once his soul’s free.”

Graham’s soul made Belle look up, and the smallest spark of hope burst into life in her heart. She might not be able to save her father, but she could be there at the end. She would have a final chance to speak to him and say all the things that she was denied the chance to say when she had died herself.

“Can I come with you?” she asked weakly.

Graham nodded. “Of course. That’s why I came. I’ll sneak you in.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Graham finished his coffee and they left the diner on their way to the hospital. There was still quite a while before the reap was due, but Belle knew that she wasn’t going to be good for anything until she had seen this through. She went into the ER, grabbing a chair in the corner of the waiting room and trying to make herself as small as possible. Hopefully, anyone who saw her there would assume that she was waiting to be seen herself or waiting for someone else who was already in the emergency room. At least in a hospital, looking distraught wasn’t going to engender any strange comments.

She leaned her head back against the wall, hugging her arms around her chest. She wondered how Graham could stand it, working here day after day. She wondered how Dorothy could stand it, being alive and not as endured to death as Graham was. The thought of Dorothy made her eyes open and she looked around, checking that her roommate wasn’t in sight. In the heat of the moment and all the upheaval that was going on around her, she couldn’t remember her shift pattern and whether or not she was on nights this week. It would be just her luck if Dorothy was working the emergency room today and several explanations were needed. She couldn’t cope with losing her father and having to uproot her entire life at the same time.

There was no sign of Dorothy and Belle closed her eyes again, listening to the bustle of the hospital going on around her. Time was ticking by so slowly, and as she glanced at her watch, she realise that Gold would probably have dealt with P. Dobson by now and would be on his way back to the diner to find her vanished without trace.

She grabbed her phone and sent him a quick message.

_Sorry, something came up, need to take a raincheck for the day._

His response came a minute later.

_Of course. Are you all right?_

No, Belle thought to herself. No, she was definitely not all right. Death was hard enough to deal with on its own, but like this, it was even worse.

Honesty was the best policy. It was what had got them through before, and it was what would get them through now.

_No, I’m not. Graham’s reaping my dad this morning._

_I understand. Would you like me to be there?_

Belle closed her eyes. She wanted him to be there, more than anything, but at the same time, this was something that she had to do by herself. This was a final goodbye between her and her father and she didn’t want anyone to intervene in that, not even Graham, although she knew that he would be there by necessity.

_Not right now. Thanks for offering._

_I’ll see you later then. You can do this, Belle. You’re so much stronger than you know._

Belle put her phone away and returned to her thoughts. In spite of all the sorrow that was building up around her, there was one thing that she kept coming back to. She was going to see her father again and get the chance to speak to him, and that was something that she might never have had otherwise. They would not have much time together, but for that moment, she would have the closure that she had so desperately craved when she had first died.

She heard an ambulance siren wailing outside, and she looked up at the clock. It was still too early for that to be her father. Was it? She craned her neck to try and see out of the window, but as was probably to be expected, she couldn’t see the resus area from the main waiting room. Graham had promised that he would come and get her when the time came, so all she could do was wait and hope that she wouldn’t be too late.

“Are you ok, honey?”

Belle looked up out of her knees to see that one of the receptionists had come over to her, a tiny blonde woman. Belle nodded and was about to say something to politely make her go away, when she saw a post-it tucked into the breast pocket of her uniform.

“I work with Graham,” she added in a low tone. “You’re not waiting for a reap, are you? We don’t get external influences in here very often.”

Belle shook her head. “No… I’m waiting for Graham’s reap. It’s a long story.”

“Don’t worry, I understand. What’s the name? I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“French. Maurice French.”

The receptionist nodded. “I’ll let you know if Graham can’t. Also, don’t let the name badge fool you; you can call me Tina.”

“Thank you, Tina.”

“All in a day’s work. We help out our own.”

Belle closed her eyes again, leaning back against the wall and waiting. The idea of having reapers from other divisions looking out for her was a comforting one. It made her feel less alone in the world, with only the few friends she had on her own team to rely on for support.

Another ambulance’s screamers pulled up and were silenced. Time kept ticking away, and Belle felt a soft touch on her arm. It was Tina, back again.

“It’s time,” she said softly, leading Belle through the waiting room into the emergency room proper. Despite all the hustle and bustle and nurses and doctors running around, there was a calmness to the walk through, as if they were within a little bubble of tranquillity. It was almost as if Belle wasn’t there in the room at all, but just an observer on the outside looking in.

They reached the final cubicle in the ER and Tina squeezed her hand as Graham came out.

“It’s ok,” she said. “It’ll all be over in a moment. The waiting’s the worst part, I think. Once it’s over, then it’s over.”

There was a great deal of truth in what she said.

“How’s he doing?” Belle asked Graham.

“All right for now,” Graham said. “I’ve pulled his soul. Just a matter of time now.”

Belle tried to peer around the curtains to see Moe, but Graham gently turned her away.

“You don’t want to see it happen,” he said. “You don’t want to see him now. Believe me.”

Belle nodded. As desperate as she was to see her father again, she knew this time that taking the advice of reapers older and wiser than her would be the best thing.

Belle had noticed over the last few months that reapers had the uncanny ability to not be noticed; even Ella was able to not draw attention to herself at crucial moments. It wasn’t that no-one saw her standing outside this little cubicle with no discernible reason for being there. It was more that they just didn’t question her presence. She thought again of the feeling of being on the outside looking in.

Belle closed her eyes, trying to block out the sound of the hospital around her, the monitors beeping and alarms screaming, and the nurses and doctors rushing around her as she just stood there, unable to move and unable to do anything remotely useful. She tried to just detach herself from the world, to make herself as invisible as possible.

“Belle?”

It was her father’s voice, and Belle opened her eyes to see Moe standing in front of her, looking confused. It was the first time that she had seen him since her disastrous visit to her flat all those months ago just after she had become a reaper, and despite the dire circumstances, she had to smile, the tears of happiness welling up in her eyes at being able to see him as herself one more time.

“Hello again, Papa,” she said.

“I don’t understand.” Moe looked around at the emergency room, and at the curtains around the cubicle. Belle could see the flatlining heart monitor through a gap in the drapes. “Am I dead?”

“Yes, Papa. But it’s all right. It’s all over now.”

Graham came out from behind the drapes, touching Moe’s arm lightly.

“Why don’t we go somewhere a little quieter?” he suggested. “Then you can speak to your daughter in peace.”

Belle slipped her arm through her father’s, guiding him calmly through the panic and drama of the emergency room and out into one of the corridors, where all was eerily peaceful in comparison to the place that they had just left. Graham hung back, out of earshot but still able to see them, and Belle sat down on a bench, patting the space beside her to get her father to sit down with her. She knew that she really ought to be sending him on to his lights, but Graham had arranged this time for them together, and she wanted to make the most of it. No doubt he would let her know if she was taking too long.

“We never really got to say goodbye,” Belle said. “I just wanted the chance to say that I love you one more time before you move on.”

“Where am I going?” Moe asked. “Surely, won’t you be there too? Belle, my darling girl, I can’t think of a heaven without you in it.”

“I’ll be there,” Belle said. “Just not quite yet. I’ve still got some things to do here, more people to help.”

Moe’s brow furrowed. “Have you always been here? A ghost?”

Belle shook her head. “Not a ghost. Not exactly. But I’ve always been here. You just didn’t know it was me. I came back to my apartment after the funeral, said I was from the housing agency.”

“That was you?” Moe’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“Well…” Moe just sighed, a shaky sigh full of emotion, and then he threw his arms around his daughter. “Oh Belle, my love. I’ve missed you so much, and I don’t want to go into this great unknown without you.”

“She’s not the only one waiting for you, you know.”

Belle jerked her head up from Moe’s shoulder, gasping at the sight that met her in the corridor. Moe’s lights had arrived, and with them, someone she had never dreamed of seeing again.

“Mum?” she breathed. “Is this… Are you… I’ve never seen people in the lights before, only places, things…”

“No, we can come too.”

“Colette? Is that really you?” Moe got up off the bench, going over towards his lights and reaching out for his wife, who smiled.

“It’s been a long time, darling. You’ve done so well, and I’m so proud of you. Both of you.”

She reached out her other hand towards Belle, who hesitated, unsure whether to take it or not. She looked over her shoulder at Graham, who nodded.

Colette’s soul didn’t feel like her father’s did; it wasn’t as solid, more like touching a vapour, and Belle was scared of exerting too much pressure in case she vanished.

“I love you, Bluebell,” she said, pressing her lips against Belle’s forehead, her touch feeling like a summer breeze.

The lights were still manifesting, and Belle saw the entrance to Game of Thorns coming into view behind her mother.

“It’s time to go now,” Colette said, squeezing Moe’s hand. He looked over at Belle.

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?” he asked.

Belle nodded. “I’ll be there with you before you know it,” she said. “There are still adventures to be had here, though.”

“Then you go and have those adventures. If you couldn’t do them before the accident, I see no reason why you can’t do them now.” Moe gave Belle another bear hug. “I love you, Belle.”

“I love you too, Papa.”

She took a step back from the lights; she knew that it was time for her parents to move on and begin the next part of their afterlife together, but the thought did not give her any sadness. They weren’t alone, wherever they were going, and she was sure that the concept of time wasn’t exactly set in stone once you were dead and had moved on so completely. She knew wholeheartedly that she would see her parents again when the time came. Seeing so many other people going to their lights over the past few months had renewed her faith that there was definitely something more waiting for her after her time on this earth was done. She would miss her father, but she hadn’t been able to have any contact with him in her reaping guise as it was, so it wasn’t as much of a terrible loss as she thought it might have been.

Moe and Colette gave her a final little wave before they stepped through Game of Thorns’ door, and the lights swept them up out of the hospital. Graham gave a little smile of approval and came over, putting his arm around Belle.

“Thank you,” she said. “I really needed that.”

“You’re welcome. I’d best get back; I’ll be missed, but I’m glad that it was cathartic for you.”

Belle nodded. “It was. Thank you.”

Graham ducked back into the emergency room and Belle was left alone in the corridor with the memories of her final goodbyes. A weight had lifted off her shoulders that she hadn’t even realised was there, and despite the fact that death was all around her, she felt a lightness in her heart. Her father was dead and she was truly alone in the world, except she wasn’t really. She still had her new family of reapers. He was the one who had been alone after she and her mother had passed on, and now he didn’t have to be alone any more.

Belle wiped the tears off her face and made her way through the hospital, out into the crisp autumn air. She had to double-take when she saw Gold standing on the street opposite, but she wasn’t too surprised. He had a sixth sense about these things, she’d been convinced of it before.

“Are you all right?” he asked as she crossed over to him.

Belle nodded. “Yes. I’m more all right than I thought I was going to be, actually. In the end, it was all so peaceful and quiet. It was the waiting that got me more than anything.”

“It usually is.” He slipped an arm around her and kissed her gently, and Belle leaned into him.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I didn’t realise how much I needed to see you until I actually saw you.”

Gold shrugged. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. You tend to know.”

They walked off down the street, wandering slowly and aimlessly without any real destination in mind, but Belle didn’t mind. She had the closure she’d needed so desperately, and she had Gold to see her through the grief.


	18. Chapter 18

Belle was glad that it was sunny. Although winter had well and truly fallen now and the days were ever shorter and colder, the weather had seen fit to let her have a bright day today, as she made her way through the town to the cemetery in the centre.

Considering that it was surrounded by busy roads on all sides, there was a sense of calmness in among the graves, and it made Belle smile. This was a resting place for people at peace, and she knew that she’d had the satisfaction of helping some of them on their way to peace.

Well, not all of them were at peace just yet. Belle gave a sigh as she stopped in front of the marble slab that she had come to see, one that she had not as yet had the courage to look at.

_Belle French, Beloved Daughter, 4th January 1988 - 16th February 2018_

The others had asked if she had wanted anyone to accompany her on this first visit to her own grave, but Belle had declined. After all the time it had taken to come to terms with her own death and her new afterlife, she felt that this was something that she wanted to do alone.

She shook herself, not wanting to linger on her own marker, reading the dates of her too-short life over and over, and she glanced to the stones on either side, one shining and brand new, only installed a little while ago, and one much older.

_Colette French, Dearly Missed, 23rd August 1962 - 17th May 1995_

_Maurice French, Loving Father and Husband, 18th June 1957 - 3rd September 2018_

Belle supposed that to the outside observer, this would be a sad sight. A little family, now gone in its entirety, the oldest member being the last to go. Belle didn’t feel the same way. She knew that wherever her parents were now, they were happy together, and they would wait for her for as long as it took to join them. It would be the blink of an eye to them, she was sure of it. They had each other, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Belle set her basket on the frozen ground and pulled out the first bouquet. Game of Thorns had not reopened since her father’s death, and the other florists in the town just didn’t make bouquets in the same way that Moe had always done, so in the end, Belle had just bought the cut flowers and made up the individual little posies herself.

The one for her mother’s grave was white and pink, lilies and honeysuckle, her favourite flowers. Their garden had always been full of honeysuckle when Belle had been a girl, and in spring and summer there had never been any shortage of butterflies darting between the blooms. It was too cold for butterflies now, and too cold really for honeysuckle, but if she could bring brightness and light to the cemetery when the warm weather came again, then Belle would be happy. Moe’s contained creamy yellow camellias, always his favourite to work with.

Finally, Belle took the last flower out of her basket. It felt strange to be laying flowers on her own grave, but if she was tending to her parents’ final resting places, then she saw no reason to let her own go neglected. A few simple white roses would suffice for her, to make the ground look pretty. Placing the flowers there gave her a sense of release. It truly marked the end of her old life, and the end of her grieving period for it. Seeing this gravestone here, with her parents either side of her and knowing they had moved on made her want to focus on the future and not dwell on the life that she no longer had.

She stayed crouching on the cold ground for a while, looking at the marble inscriptions with a little smile on her face.

_Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep._

She had never really thought anything of the significance of those beautiful words until now, and she had never really known how they could have given anyone comfort. Now though, she knew. There was so much that she knew now that she didn’t know before, and the knowledge gave her the strength that she needed to get through this life filled with death. Everyone had their own methods of coping, and perhaps Belle had found her own in poetry.

She looked up as she heard footsteps crunching along the path towards her, and she was surprised to see Henry. He stopped a little way short, not wanting to intrude on a private moment of grief but evidently still wanting to speak to her. Belle waved him over.

“Hi Henry. What brings you here? It’s a pretty bleak place for a kid.”

“My mom’s visiting her dad,” Henry said, gesturing over his shoulder towards the foreboding looking mausoleum a little further into the cemetery. “I don’t like it in there, it gives me the creeps, so I came out for some fresh air.”

“Yeah, I can appreciate that.”

Henry crouched down beside her, looking at the graves.

“It’s a shame they were all so young when they died,” he observed, looking at her family’s dates. “Still, at least they’re all together now.”

Belle nodded. “Yeah. They’ve moved on.”

Henry was looking at her steadily, and Belle met his gaze levelly. Alistair had told her about his suspicions of Henry seeing their true faces, and she wondered where this interaction would lead.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Lacey,” Henry said. He looked at the marble headstones again. “Don’t worry. You’ll see them again some day.”

Belle smiled. “Yeah, I know I will.”

It was a moment of unspoken understanding between them. Whether Henry knew about the grim reapers or not, he knew, somehow, that the woman he knew as Lacey was the Belle who was buried beneath their feet.

Henry left her to her own devices as his mother came out of the mausoleum, and Belle sighed. It was nice to have someone living who knew the reapers’ secret, even if he was only a kid who couldn’t exactly do anything with the information other than live with it. It made her feel like they were less alone in the world, and they could still interact with the living in a meaningful way. Now that she had moved out of Dorothy’s apartment into her own place, she found herself missing the constant contact with the living that having a roommate had provided her with. Even Alistair had admitted that perhaps his policy of separation did not always work. Humans were social creatures after all, and being dead didn’t change that.

At last it was time to leave; her joints were seizing up from crouching in the cold for so long, and she grabbed her basket, making her way back through the cemetery to where she had left her bicycle, pedalling quickly through the town in an effort to warm up before she reached Alistair’s place. She allowed herself a sly little grin as she free-wheeled down a hill. For all that she might be a little lonely in her new place now, she didn’t exactly spend a lot of time there these days, and not a lot of time alone.

Alistair opened the door before she knocked, greeting her with a kiss as he let her into the house.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Well,” Belle said. “It went well. Actually, it went better than expected. I was fully anticipating being an emotional wreck, but I feel much lighter now than I have for a while. I think that maybe I needed to see it to make it final, and truly allow myself to move on from my life.”

Alistair nodded. “I think that there’s something profound about seeing a grave and knowing that there’s not really anything of substance there.”

“Where are you buried?”

“Back in Scotland. I haven’t been there for a long time, but we can visit if you’d like. You could meet all my relations.”

Belle wrinkled her nose. “A bit morbid, don’t you think? Not that I’m not up for a holiday to Scotland if you can wrangle it. We’d better not tell anyone though; Mulan will be wanting to come with us to see Merida.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I have just received a petition from Merida to join our little post-it crew over here in Storybrooke.”

Belle smiled widely. “That’s great! Is she going to be able to come?”

“I see no reason why she shouldn’t. It’s not like we couldn’t use another experienced pair of hands. Ella keeps complaining of being overworked and underpaid.”

“We’re not paid at all.”

“Precisely her argument. She’s all for lobbying the powers that be for better remunerations.”

“Do you think she’ll get anywhere?”

“No, but everyone needs a hobby.”

Belle gave a snort of laughter. Ella would never fail to be a source of entertainment for the rest of the reapers, and Belle thought that she knew it and wholeheartedly embraced her role. Of all of them, Ella had always been the most accepting of death and their state of afterlife, and her attitude in turn helped all of the rest of them - even Alistair, who had been dead longer than she had.

Alistair had slipped into the kitchen whilst Belle had been peeling off her outer layers and returned with a glass of wine for her.

“Dinner’s in the slow cooker,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for you to warm up before we eat.” He grimaced as he handed her the glass. “Your hands are like ice. Come on, let’s go into the living room and take advantage of the fire.”

That was a definite advantage of Alistair’s place over her own. Being such an old house, it still had beautiful and fully-functioning fireplaces, and she settled on the sofa, turning her face towards the crackling flames and letting their heat warm her.

“You’re like a cat,” Alistair observed, following her into the room and settling beside her, one arm coming around her in a familiar hug that they had just fallen into after a while of seeing each other. “I half expected to come in here to find you stretched out on the hearth rug.”

“I can stretch out on the hearth rug if you want,” Belle said. She snuggled closer into his side and slipped a hand up under his sweater, giggling when he squirmed away from her cold fingers. “I mean, they do say that the best way to warm up is with bare skin to bare skin, and if dinner’s in the slow cooker then it’s hardly going to spoil.”

Alistair looked at her with narrowed eyes.

“I do believe that you might have ulterior motives, Miss French.”

She winked at him. “Of course I do.”

Despite having got off to a slightly inauspicious start, their intimate relationship had only gone from strength to strength once they were on the same page. Alistair might have been out of practice when it came to pleasuring a partner, but he had proved himself a very eager student and Belle was more than happy to give him as much practical instruction as he wanted. She smiled against his mouth as she felt his warm hands come up under her layers to splay over her back.

“You know, if we’re going to warm up skin to skin, then we should probably take off a few layers,” Belle suggested, bringing her hands to the hem of his sweater and making to tug it up over his head. He gave a grunt of protest at having to relinquish his hold on her, but duly capitulated, and Belle rewarded him with a kiss once the sweater was off and she was starting on his shirt buttons, slipping her hands inside once it was open enough and tracing her fingertips over his skin, flicking at his nipples and making him hiss with pleasure.

“I thought that you were the one who was cold and needed warming up,” Alistair pointed out.

“I know,” Belle replied, giving him a sweet smile. “That’s exactly why I’m still bundled up in several layers and we’re getting you naked first.” To emphasise her point, she flicked at his nipple again with cold fingers and Alistair squirmed again.

“All right, all right, I concede your point.”

“Good.”

She kissed him again, pushing him back against the sofa cushions so that she could make her way down from his mouth and map his neck and chest, her tongue following the path that her fingers had taken before. Alistair groaned under her touch, and Belle smiled against his belly, dipping her tongue into his navel and making his hips jerk up before she sat up and began to work his belt buckle.

She didn’t get much further than that, as Alistair wrestled himself out of the sleeves of his shirt and stayed her hands, pulling her back down on top of him for another kiss.

“It’s my turn,” he said, pulling her sweater up and off and cupping her breasts through her camisole. Her nipples were already hard from the cold and were even more sensitive from his ministrations, showing even through her layers of clothing, and she gasped as he brushed his thumbs over them, arching her back to press up against him more firmly.

“Let’s see if we can’t warm you up a little.”

Her camisole and bra came off in short order afterwards and then Alistair’s hands were back on her breasts, kneading them gently and sending a fresh wave of arousal straight between her legs. He pinched her nipples before bending to suck one into his mouth, laving his tongue over the pert bud and making her moan, wanting nothing more than for him to repeat the treatment on her other breast and at the same time go down even lower, to where she could already feel the heat pooling between her thighs in anticipation. She rubbed herself up against his crotch; he too was showing rather obvious signs of arousal now, his cock beginning to stir and bulge against his zipper.

She unfastened his trousers then and in a somewhat ungainly display of a lack of dexterity, they managed to kick them and his boxers down and off to land in a heap on the floor beside the sofa. His cock sprang to attention between them, and Belle curled her fingers around his length, stroking him up and down to take the edge off. Alistair groaned, throwing his head back with pleasure, eyes closed.

“Oh Belle, you’re going to ruin me.”

“Who’s to say that’s not my intention?”

“If you do, you know that I won’t be good for anything at all afterwards, least of all warming you up.”

Since Belle was already getting rather warm, she had to laugh at the euphemism, but on reflection, she decided that teasing Alistair to distraction before they’d really got started wouldn’t be a good idea. They had all the time in the world, after all, and his body looked so beautiful in the flickering firelight. No, she wanted to drag this one out for as long as she possibly could.

She let his cock slip from her grip and took his hands, placing them on her hips and unfastening her jeans to show off her underwear.

“Undress me, Alistair,” she whispered.

“With pleasure, my love.”

He pulled her jeans slowly down to her knees and cupped her sex through her underwear, stroking along her slit through the dampened gusset. Belle’s hips bucked up against his touch, wanting more, and he slipped a finger into her panties to touch her properly, just the very tip ghosting along her folds.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, like that. I need more, Alistair.”

“Then more you shall have.”

She scrambled out of her jeans and underwear and settled herself back on top of him. There was a moment of stillness then, both of them just admiring each other’s bareness in the firelight, the urgency of their encounter all but forgotten as Belle felt a sudden swell of emotion in her heart. She was absolutely in love with this man, and she knew that he felt the same way about her. She could see it in his eyes, in the sheer wonder that filled their chocolate brown depths.

Then his hands were back between her thighs, parting her folds and seeking out her clit, rubbing his thumb in languid circles over the swollen pearl and making Belle wriggle on top of him. She could feel the sheen of perspiration prickling on her chest; she was definitely warm enough now, but she didn’t want him ever to stop doing what he was doing.

“That’s good,” she whispered. “Yes, more like that, please.”

With her praise and encouragement, he redoubled his efforts, a finger slipping into her cleft and stroking along her folds to spread around her pooling honey before pushing up inside her. Belle’s knees were shaking and she collapsed down on top of him, giving him a clumsy kiss as he just chuckled and pushed another finger up inside, curling and petting at her inner walls. There was no pause for breath, and there was no uncertainty anymore. He knew what he was doing now, and they had been together enough times that he had learned the best ways to bring her to her climax in dramatic fashion.

“Come for me, Belle,” he crooned in her ear, pressing his thumb firmly against her clit and making her cry out with the intensity of the sensation. “Come for me now, you know you want to.”

Belle couldn’t have held back even if she’d tried; another curl of his fingers inside her was all it took to bring her over the edge, warmth radiating out through her veins as she yelled out.

“Yes! Oh, Alistair…”

She was panting heavily as she came down from the high, Alistair drawing his fingers out of her carefully and petting her through into the afterglow, and as soon as she had enough breath back, she kissed him deeply, fingers carding into his hair and never wanting to let him go. His hands came around her back, pulling her in closer, and she could feel her juices on his fingers smearing over her wet skin.

“Feeling any warmer yet?” Alistair asked with a cheeky little smile as she finally let him up for air.

“I think I might be, yes.” Belle traced a finger down his chest. “But what about you? I think that you could do with warming up as well. Especially this part of you.” She gripped his cock, stroking him once again and swiping her thumb through the bead of liquid that had started to form at his tip.

“Well, you are lovely and warm,” Alistair said. He brought his sticky fingers up to his lips and licked her essence off her. “And if you feel this wonderful around my fingers, then I would love to know what you feel like round my cock.”

Objectively, he knew what she felt like around his cock; they had made love more than enough times for him to be familiar with it, but the words still made Belle grin. A couple of months ago, she didn’t think that she would ever have been able to get him to indulge in talking dirty with her like this. There were some things that no amount of modernisation could change and this seemed to be one area where Alistair was still stuck in the past. There was a still a light flush of colour on his cheekbones, but Belle decided to put that one down to exertion rather than embarrassment. He had shed so many of his inhibitions during the course of their relationship, and she supposed that she had shed a lot of hers as well. They were on the same page now, and they knew how to communicate with each other – both in the bedroom and outside it.

She raised herself up on her knees a little so that she could line them up, and sank down onto his cock, feeling him stretch and fill her in the best way. Alistair groaned at the sensation, his fingers digging into her hips.

“Oh Belle,” he murmured. “You always feel so incredible. I could stay inside you forever.”

Belle rocked her hips and he groaned again.

“I’d like that,” she said. “But it would play havoc with the reaps.”

There were no more words after that, as Belle settled into a rhythm, Alistair thrusting up to meet her hips, their hands slipping on each other’s skin as they moved together, the tip of his cock brushing the sweet spot deep inside her and bringing her closer and closer to that peak again.

“Oh Belle, Belle, my lovely Belle!”

He came with a final thrust upwards, his hips shivering as he spilled inside her, a low, guttural groan escaping the back of his throat. Belle kept moving on him, rubbing up against his pubic bone. He was buried in her to the hilt; she could feel the coarse hair at the base of his cock tickling her sensitive folds, and she was so close to the edge.

His thumb found her clit again and a simple touch brought her over with him, closing her eyes and throwing her head back with a moan that would have alarmed the neighbours had there been any.

Belle raised herself up on shaking knees to let Alistair slip out of her and then lay back against his chest, burying her face in his shoulder and never wanting to move. She felt him stroke her hair out of the way, his fingertips doodling patterns on her back.

Beside them, the fire continued to crackle, and Belle could still feel the welcoming heat from it dancing over her skin.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

Their relationship was never going to be plain sailing, Belle knew that. There was still the undeniable fact that they were dead and they were going to have to keep reaping other souls; they would never be able to get away from the death that surrounded them and that was naturally going to have a wearing effect, but she hoped that with each other to rely on, they would be able to get through it. No matter what they might witness during the day, they would always be able to come home to each other and lose themselves in each other, leaning on the support that they had built up for themselves.

She knew that this wouldn’t last forever. Alistair had been reaping for so much longer than she had and it was inevitable that he would get his lights sooner rather than later and have to make that journey to move on, but if there was one thing that her time as a reaper had taught her, it was that nothing ever really ended. She would go on, and she would see him again soon enough. Time was nothing to a reaper, not when they had so much of it, and when they knew that there would be so much more of it when they found their lights. She did not feel any trepidation at the prospect.

For now, she would just enjoy what she had, and live every moment as if it were her last. Now that she had the second chance to live, she was going to really live it to the full, with Alistair by her side for as long as she had him.

She kissed him deeply, trying to pour the very essence of her feelings towards him into that kiss.

She had found love after life, and she was never going to let it go.


End file.
